American Literature, Post-1865: Web Resources

A wonderful resource on the history of literature in America, the Library of Congress holds digital collections that include manuscripts, audio recordings, papers, and plays. Some of the outstanding collections include "Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature," "Cabinet of American Illustration," and "The Walt Whitman Papers."

The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry.

The Academy of American Poets offers this short guide to the literary history of the Black Arts Movement and its writers, which include Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Mari Evans.

Browse hundreds of essays, interviews, and articles about poets and poetry. This includes a wide swath of literary movements and poets, from the American Romantics to currently publishing writers.

American Passages: A Literary Survey provides professional development and classroom materials to enhance the study of American Literature in its cultural context. It is organized into 16 Units; each exploring canonical and re-discovered texts, and presenting the material through an Instructor Guide, a 30-minute documentary video series, literary texts and an integrated Study Guide.

"Here you can listen in on William Faulkner’s sessions with audiences at the University of Virginia in 1957 and 1958, during his two terms as UVA’s first Writer-in-Residence. Under CONTEXTS you’ll find an introduction to this archive as well as essays, news articles, photographs and other materials to provide backgrounds to the writer, the times and the place. BROWSE allows you to read and play transcripts of those sessions, one tape recording or one question&answer at a time. Use SEARCH if you want to hear something in particular, such as Faulkner’s comments on one of his works or on writing or on the Civil Rights movement of that time."