American Literature - Seminar Topics

American Literature - Seminar Topics – II Semester – I M.A

1.       Eco-Centric Reading of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”. 

2.      Symbolism in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”. 

3.      Thanatos in “Because I Could not stop for Death”.

4.      Character study of ‘Silas’ from "The Death of the Hired Man".

5.       Representation of New York City in “To Brooklyn Bridge”.

6.       Racism, Double Consciousness, and Resistance in the poems of Langston Hughes.

7.       Idea of Learning from Nature in "The American Scholar".

8.       Ideas of Transcendentalism in "The American Scholar".

9.       Emerson’s Advice to the scholars to become “Man Thinking”.

10.   Influence of books and past learning on scholars.

11.   "Civil Disobedience”: A Derisive Commentary on Institutions (Govt.).

12.   Concept of self- reliance in "Civil Disobedience”.

13.   Freudian Uncanny in “Fall of the House of Usher”.

14.   Gothic Setting and Symbolism in “Fall of the House of Usher”

15.   Situational irony in O.Henry’s Short Stories.

16.   Narrate the story “A Visit of Charity” by Eudora Welty.

17.   American Dream in Death of a Sales Man – with reference to Willy Loman.

18.  Narrate the story of Death of a Sales Man.

19.   Willy Loman as Nietzsche’s Übermensch.

20.   Summarise the play Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf.

21.   Reality vs. Illusion in Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf.

22.   Characteristics of Absurdism in Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf.

23.   Grapes of Wrath – As a Transcendental Text.

24.   Dialectic Materialism: A Marxist analysis of Grapes of Wrath.

25.  Identity, dispossession from homeland, and post-colonial resistance in Grapes of Wrath.

26.   Tommy Wilhelm and Heidegger’s Dasein: An existential study of Seize the Day.

27.   Tommy Wilhelm as an Anti-Hero.

28.   Modernist Narrative Techniques employed in Seize the Day.