ENG231L - Literature of the Hudson River Valley

3 Credit(s)

Liberal Arts
This course introduces students to the work of authors who lived and wrote in the Hudson River Valley from the early 19th century through the present. Offering intriguing perspectives on regional landscape, culture, and social history, the work of these writers takes us from the rural magic of the Catskill Mountains (Irving’s Rip Van Winkle) to the urban poverty of Albany (Kennedy’s Ironweed). Students may be surprised to learn just how many notable American writers spent parts of their careers in the Hudson Valley: Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Djuna Barnes, for example, and recent Poet Laureate Billy Collins.