American Literature Courses and Certifications

Modern States;  Tufts University

American Literature

It covers all of the substantive material that is usually taught in a survey course of American Literature at the college level.

• Independent
• 48 hours
• Self-Paced
• Free Online Course

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - American Holocaust Literature - Lecture 25

A literary analysis of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, focusing on Holocaust trauma, third-generation memory, metafiction, and shifting perspectives on victims and perpetrators.

• YouTube
• 49 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

NPTEL;  IIT Madras

American Literature & Culture

Explore American authors, texts, genres, and themes while tracing U.S. literary history and its connections to historical and sociocultural developments.

• YouTube
• 1 day 8 hours
• Self-Paced
• Free Video

Gangster Fiction: Rise of an American Antihero

Read W. R. Burnett's Little Caesar to trace the American gangster antihero: analyze characterization, vernacular language, narrative structure, and the construction of public persona.

• Coursera
• 4 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

Gangster Fiction: The Gangster American Dream

Read The Great Gatsby as gangster fiction: analyze Fitzgerald's characters, symbolism, poetic and vernacular language, and narrative structure against Prohibition and Jazz Age history.

• Coursera
• 5 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

Herman Melville: The Confidence-Man (Live Online)

37 ratings at CourseHorse

Embark on a riveting exploration of trust, deceit, and existential uncertainty in Herman Melville’s masterpiece.

• CourseHorse
• 12 hours
• Self-Paced
• $335.00

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man (Live Online)

37 ratings at CourseHorse

Examine the intersection of race, identity and modernism through a landmark American novel and its enduring questions.

• CourseHorse
• 12 hours
• Self-Paced
• $335.00

The “I” of Criticism: An Introduction to Vivian Gornick (Live Online)

34 ratings at CourseHorse

Examine how personal narrative becomes literature through the lens of a groundbreaking voice in memoir and criticism.

• CourseHorse
• 12 hours
• Self-Paced
• $335.00

Moby-Dick: Reading the White Whale (Live Online)

33 ratings at CourseHorse

Explore how a once-dismissed novel became a cornerstone of American literature.

• CourseHorse
• 12 hours
• Self-Paced
• $335.00

James Baldwin: Native Son (Live Online)

33 ratings at CourseHorse

Explore the writings of James Baldwin across novels, essays, poetry, and film while examining his critiques of race, sexuality, and politics in America.

• CourseHorse
• 12 hours
• Self-Paced
• $335.00

The American Renaissance and Ralph Waldo Emerson

11 ratings at Coursera

Explore Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism: American Exceptionalism, the scholar's role, Self-Reliance, Literary Ethics, and Emerson's part in the anti-slavery movement.

• Coursera
• 2 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

The American Renaissance and Frederick Douglass

Explore Frederick Douglass's view of the anti-slavery movement and the abolition of slavery through his autobiographical narrative and the rationale behind his repeated acts of self-narration.

• Coursera
• 2 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

The American Renaissance and Walt Whitman

Trace how a printer became a poet: Whitman's working-class context, his free verse in post-Jacksonian American society, and the reasons behind his revisions.

• Coursera
• 2 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

The American Renaissance and Harriet Beecher Stowe

Read Harriet Beecher Stowe through keywords like melodrama, serialization, sentimentalism, and material culture, and trace the evangelical tradition in American literature.

• Coursera
• 2 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course

The American Renaissance and Mark Twain

Examine Mark Twain's rivalry with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Huckleberry Finn as tall tale, realism and naturalism, and blackface minstrelsy alongside Life on the Mississippi.

• Coursera
• 2 weeks, 2 hours a week
• Self-Paced
• Paid Course