This course explores the literature, culture, history, and values of New York City from 1898, when the five boroughs joined together to form Greater New York, through the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the national and New York responses that followed.

Traces the development of New York City as the nations leading immigrant, multi-ethnic and multi-racial center from its Dutch beginnings to the present.

This course examines issues by studying literary texts, both classic and popular, and important historical documents on what would now be called the blue-collar experience. It places the working-class heroes and villains of post-bellum American literature in the context of a culture struggling with compassion for and fear of manual workers and slum dwellers, immigrants, and agitators, the other half, in sum.