Book Title: Open Anthology of American Literature

Author: Farrah Cato

Book Description: This anthology is divided into five major sections, starting with the Colonial period and ending with the publication of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl on the eve of the Civil War. Each section includes an overview and framework for approaching the readings, as well as overarching questions to help students think about the connections between the texts. There is also a brief introduction to each of the authors featured in these sections, followed by discussion questions based on the texts. The textual introductions do not include a great deal of biographical material; instead, I have used them to provide a frame (typically connected to the larger section introduction) that I hope will help students to navigate from. The discussion questions could also easily be used as open-ended exam questions or as essay prompts. Some of the discussion questions are also invitations for students to make intertextual connections, or to consider how the literary landscape changes from its “beginnings” to the Civil War.