Timeline
Complete Table of Contents
- ★
- Introduction
- Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors
- ★
- 1507
- The name “America” appears on a map
- Toby Lester
- ★
- 1521, August 13
- Mexico in America
- Kirsten Silva Gruesz
- ★
- 1536, July 24
- Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
- Ilan Stavans
- ★
- 1585
- “Counterfeited according to the truth”
- Michael Gaudio
- ★
- 1607
- Fear and love in the Virginia colony
- Adam Goodheart
- ★
- 1630
- A city upon a hill
- Elizabeth Winthrop
- ★
- 1643
- A nearer neighbor to the Indians
- Ted Widmer
- ★
- 1666, July 10
- Anne Bradstreet
- Wai Chee Dimock
- ★
- 1670
- The American jeremiad
- Emory Elliott
- ★
- 1670
- The stamp of God’s image
- Jason D. LaFountain
- ★
- 1673
- The Jesuit relations
- Laurent Dubois
- ★
- 1683
- Francis Daniel Pastorius
- Alfred L. Brophy
- ★
- 1692
- The Salem witchcraft trials
- Susan Castillo
- ★
- 1693–94, March 4
- Edward Taylor
- Werner Sollors
- ★
- 1700
- Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph
- David Blight
- ★
- 1722
- Benjamin Franklin, The Silence Dogood Letters
- Joyce E. Chaplin
- ★
- 1740
- The Great Awakening
- Joanne van der Woude
- ★
- 1765, December 23
- Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur
- Leo Damrosch
- ★
- 1773, September
- Phillis Wheatley
- Rafia Zafar
- ★
- 1776
- The Declaration of Independence
- Frank Kelleter
- ★
- 1784, June
- Charles Willson Peale
- Michael Leja
- ★
- 1787
- James Madison, Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention
- Mitchell Meltzer
- ★
- 1787–1790
- John Adams, Discourses on Davila
- John Diggins
- ★
- 1791
- Philip Freneau and The National Gazette
- Jefrey L. Pasley
- ★
- 1796
- Washington’s farewell address
- François Furstenberg
- ★
- 1798
- Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts
- Nancy Armstrong
- ★
- 1798
- American gothic
- Marc Amfreville
- ★
- 1801, March 4
- Jefferson’s first inaugural address
- Jan Ellen Lewis
- ★
- 1804, January
- The matter of Haiti
- Kaiama Glover
- ★
- 1809
- Cupola of the world
- Judith Richardson
- ★
- 1819
- The Missouri crisis
- John Stauffer
- ★
- 1820, November 27
- Landscape with birds
- Christoph Irmscher
- ★
- 1821
- Sequoyah, the Cherokee syllabary
- Lisa Brooks
- ★
- 1821, June 30
- Junius Brutus Booth
- Coppelia Kahn
- ★
- 1822
- Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the Ojibwe firefly, and Longfellow’s Hiawatha
- David Treuer
- ★
- 1825, November
- Thomas Cole and the Hudson River
- Alan Wallach
- ★
- 1826, July 4
- Songs of the republic
- Steve Erickson
- ★
- 1826
- Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales
- Richard Hutson
- ★
- 1826; 1927
- Transnational poetry
- Stephen Burt
- ★
- 1827
- Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
- Terryl L. Givens
- ★
- 1828
- David Walker, Appeal, in Four Articles
- Tommie Shelby
- ★
- 1830, May 21
- Jump Jim Crow
- W. T. Lhamon, Jr.
- ★
- 1831, March 5
- The Cherokee Nation decision
- Philip Deloria
- ★
- 1832, July 10
- President Jackson’s bank veto
- Dan Feller
- ★
- 1835, January
- Democracy in America
- Ted Widmer
- ★
- 1835
- William Gilmore Simms, The Yemasseee
- Jefrey Johnson
- ★
- 1835
- The Sacred Harp
- Sean Wilentz
- ★
- 1836, February 23–March 6
- The Alamo and Texas border writing
- Norma E. Cantú
- ★
- 1836, February 28
- Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
- Kirsten Silva Gruesz
- ★
- 1837, August 31
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar”
- James Conant
- ★
- 1838, July 15
- “The Divinity School Address”
- Herwig Friedl
- ★
- 1838, September 3
- The slave narrative
- Caille Millner
- ★
- 1841
- “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
- Robert Clark
- ★
- 1846, June
- James Russell Lowell’s Biglow Papers
- Shelley Streeby
- ★
- 1846, late July
- Henry David Thoreau
- Jonathan Arac
- ★
- 1850
- The Scarlet Letter
- Bharati Mukherje
- ★
- 1850, July 19
- Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalist Movement
- Lawrence Buell
- ★
- 1850, August 5
- Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
- Clark Blaise
- ★
- 1851
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Beverly Lowry
- ★
- 1852
- Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance and utopian communities
- Winfried Fluck
- ★
- 1852, July 5
- Frederick Douglass, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”
- Liam Kennedy
- ★
- 1854, March
- Maria Cummins and sentimental fiction
- Cindy Weinstein
- ★
- 1855
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Angus Fletcher
- ★
- 1858
- The Lincoln-Douglas debates
- Michael T. Gilmore
- ★
- 1859
- The science of the Indian
- Scott Richard Lyons
- ★
- 1861
- Emily Dickinson
- Susan Stewart
- ★
- 1862, December 13
- The journeys of Little Women
- Shirley Samuels
- ★
- 1865, March 4
- Lincoln’s second inaugural address
- Ted Widmer
- ★
- 1865
- “Conditions of repose”
- Robin Kelsey
- ★
- 1869, March 4
- Carl Schurz
- Michael Boyden
- ★
- 1872, November 5
- All men and women are created equal
- Laura Wexler
- ★
- 1875
- The Winchester Rifle
- Merritt Roe Smith
- ★
- 1876, January 6
- Melville in the dark
- Kenneth W. Warren
- ★
- 1876, March 10
- The art of telephony
- Avital Ronell
- ★
- 1878
- “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”
- Christopher Hookway
- ★
- 1879
- John Muir and nature writing
- Scott Slovic
- ★
- 1881, January 24
- Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
- Alide Cagidemetrio
- ★
- 1884
- Mark Twain’s hairball
- Ishmael Reed
- ★
- 1884, July
- The Linotype machine
- Lisa Gitelman
- ★
- 1884, November
- The Southwest imagined
- Leah Dilworth
- ★
- 1885
- The problem of error
- James Conant
- ★
- 1885, July
- Limits to violence
- James Dawes
- ★
- 1885, October
- Writing New Orleans
- Andrei Codrescu
- ★
- 1889, August 28
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
- Yael Schacher
- ★
- 1893
- Chief Simon Pokagon and Native American literature
- David Treuer
- ★
- 1895
- Ida B. Wells, A Red Record
- Jacqueline Goldsby
- ★
- 1896
- Paul Laurence Dunbar, Lyrics of Lowly Life
- Judith Jackson Fossett
- ★
- 1896, September 6
- Queen Lili‘uokalani
- Rob Wilson
- ★
- 1897, Memorial Day
- The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Monument
- Richard Powers
- ★
- 1898, June 22
- Literature and imperialism
- Amy Kaplan
- ★
- 1899; 1924
- McTeague and Greed
- Gilberto Perez
- ★
- 1900
- Henry Adams
- T. J. Jackson Lears
- ★
- 1900
- The Wizard of Oz
- Gerald Early
- ★
- 1900; 1905
- Sister Carrie and The House of Mirth
- Farah Jasmine Grifin
- ★
- 1901
- Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
- John Edgar Wideman
- ★
- 1903, May 5
- “The real American has not yet arrived”
- Aviva Taubenfeld
- ★
- 1903
- The invention of the blues
- Luc Sante
- ★
- 1903
- One sees what one sees
- Daniel Albright
- ★
- 1904, August 30
- Henry James in America
- Ross Posnock
- ★
- 1905, October 15
- Little Nemo in Slumberland
- Katherine Roeder
- ★
- 1906, April 9
- The Azusa Street revival
- R. J. Smith
- ★
- 1906, April 18 , 5:14 a.m.
- The San Francisco Earthquake
- Kathleen Moran
- ★
- 1911
- “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”
- Philip Furia
- ★
- 1912, April 15
- Lifeboats cut adrift
- Alan Ackerman
- ★
- 1912
- The lure of impossible things
- Heather Love
- ★
- 1912
- Tarzan begins his reign
- Gerald Early
- ★
- 1913
- A modernist moment
- Bonnie Costello
- ★
- 1915
- D. W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation
- Richard Schickel
- ★
- 1915
- Robert Frost
- Christian Wiman
- ★
- 1917
- The philosopher and the millionaire
- Richard J. Bernstein
- ★
- 1920, August 10
- Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”
- Daphne A. Brooks
- ★
- 1921
- Jean Toomer
- Elizabeth Alexander
- ★
- 1922
- T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence
- Anita Patterson
- ★
- 1924
- F. O. Matthiessen meets Russell Cheney
- Robert Polito
- ★
- 1924, May 26
- The Johnson-Reed Act and ethnic literature
- Yael Schacher
- ★
- 1925
- The Great Gatsby
- Lan Tran
- ★
- 1925, June
- Sinclair Lewis
- Jefrey Ferguson
- ★
- 1925, July
- The Scopes trial
- Michael Kazin
- ★
- 1925, August 16
- Dorothy Parker
- Catherine Keyser
- ★
- 1926
- Fire!!
- Carla Kaplan
- ★
- 1926
- Hardboiled
- Walter Mosley
- ★
- 1926
- The Book-of-the-Month Club
- Joan Shelley Rubin
- ★
- 1927
- Carl Sandburg and The American Songbag
- Paul Muldoon
- ★
- 1927, May 16
- “Free to develop their faculties”
- Jefrey Rosen
- ★
- 1928, April 8, Easter Sunday
- Dilsey Gibson goes to church
- Werner Sollors
- ★
- 1928, Summer
- John Dos Passos
- Phoebe Kosman
- ★
- 1928, November 18
- The mouse that whistled
- Karal Ann Marling
- ★
- 1930
- “You're swell!”
- Robert Gottlieb
- ★
- 1930, March
- The Silent Enemy
- Micah Treuer
- ★
- 1931, March 19
- Nevada legalizes gambling
- David Thomson
- ★
- 1932
- Edmund Wilson, The American Jitters
- Anthony Grafton
- ★
- 1932
- Arthur Miller
- Andrea Most
- ★
- 1932, April or May
- The River Rouge plant and industrial beauty
- John M. Staudenmaier, S.J.
- ★
- 1932, Christmas
- Ned Cobb
- Robert Cantwell
- ★
- 1933
- Baby Face is censored
- Stephanie Zacharek
- ★
- 1933, March
- FDR’s first Fireside Chat
- Paula Rabinowitz
- ★
- 1934, September
- Robert Penn Warren
- Howell Raines
- ★
- 1935
- The Popular Front
- Angela Miller
- ★
- 1935
- The skyscraper
- Sarah Whiting
- ★
- 1935, June 10
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- Michael Tolkin
- ★
- 1935, October 10
- Porgy and Bess
- John Rockwell
- ★
- 1936, July 5
- Two days in Harlem
- Adam Bradley
- ★
- 1936, November 23
- Life begins
- Michael Lesy
- ★
- 1938
- Superman
- Douglas Wolk
- ★
- 1938, May
- Jelly Roll Morton speaks
- Marybeth Hamilton
- ★
- 1939
- Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”
- Robert O’Meally
- ★
- 1939; 1981
- Up from invisibility
- Josef Jarab
- ★
- 1940
- “No way like the American way”
- Erika Doss
- ★
- 1940–1944
- Preston Sturges
- Douglas McGrath
- ★
- 1941
- An insolent style
- Carrie Tirado Bramen
- ★
- 1941
- Citizen Kane
- Joseph McBride
- ★
- 1941
- The word “multicultural”
- Werner Sollors
- ★
- 1943
- Hemingway’s paradise, Hemingway’s prose
- Keith Taylor
- ★
- 1944
- The second Bill of Rights
- Cass R. Sunstein
- ★
- 1945, February
- Bebop
- Ingrid Monson
- ★
- 1945, April 11
- Thomas Pynchon and modern war
- Glenda Carpio
- ★
- 1945, August 6, 10:45 a.m.
- The atom bomb
- Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi
- ★
- 1946, December 5
- Integrating the military
- Gerald Early
- ★
- 1948
- Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics
- David A. Mindell
- ★
- 1948
- Saul Bellow
- Ruth Wisse
- ★
- 1949–1950
- “Birth of the Cool”
- Ted Gioia
- ★
- 1950, November 28
- “Damned busy painting”
- T. J. Clark
- ★
- 1951
- A poet among painters
- Mark Ford
- ★
- 1951
- James Jones, From Here to Eternity
- Lindsay Waters
- ★
- 1951
- A soft voice
- M. Lynn Weis
- ★
- 1952, April 12
- Elia Kazan and the blacklist in Hollywood
- Michael Ventura
- ★
- 1952, June 10
- C. L. R. James
- Donald E. Pease
- ★
- 1953, January 1
- The song in country music
- Dave Hickey
- ★
- 1954
- Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems
- Helen Vendler
- ★
- 1955, August 11
- “The self-respect of my people”
- Monica Miller
- ★
- 1955, September 21
- A. J. Liebling and the Marciano-Moore fight
- Carlo Rotella
- ★
- 1955, October 7
- A generation in miniature
- Richard Cándida Smith
- ★
- 1955, December
- Nabokov’s Lolita
- Stephen Schiff
- ★
- 1956, April 16
- “Roll Over Beethoven”
- James Miller
- ★
- 1957
- Dr. Seuss
- Philip Nel
- ★
- 1959
- “Nobody’s perfect”
- William J. Mann
- ★
- 1960
- Psycho
- William Beard
- ★
- 1960, January
- More than a game
- Michael MacCambridge
- ★
- 1961, January 20
- JFK’s inaugural address and Catch-22
- Charles Taylor
- ★
- 1961, July 2
- The author as advertisement
- David Thomson
- ★
- 1962
- Bob Dylan writes “Song to Woody”
- Joshua Clover
- ★
- 1962
- “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art”
- Howard Hampton
- ★
- 1963, April
- “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
- George Hutchinson
- ★
- 1964
- Robert Lowell, “For the Union Dead”
- Peter Sacks
- ★
- 1965, September 11
- The Council on Interracial Books for Children
- Dianne Johnson
- ★
- 1965, October
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- David Bradley
- ★
- 1968
- Norman Mailer
- Mary Gaitskill
- ★
- 1968, March
- The illusory babels of language
- Hal Foster
- ★
- 1968, August 28
- The plight of conservative literature
- Michael Kimage
- ★
- 1969
- Elizabeth Bishop, Complete Poems
- Laura Quinney
- ★
- 1969, January 11
- The first Asian Americans
- Hua Hsu
- ★
- 1969, November 12
- The eye of Vietnam
- Thi Phuong-Lan Bui
- ★
- 1970
- Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker
- Cheryl A. Wall
- ★
- 1972
- Loisaida literature
- Frances R. Aparicio
- ★
- 1973
- Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck
- Maureen N. McLane
- ★
- 1975
- Gayl Jones
- Robert O’Meally
- ★
- 1981, March 31
- Toni Morrison
- Farah Jasmine Grifin
- ★
- 1982
- Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story
- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
- ★
- 1982
- Wild Style
- Hua Hsu
- ★
- 1982
- Maya Lin’s wall
- Anne Wagner
- ★
- 1982, November 8
- Harriet Wilson
- Saidiya V. Hartman
- ★
- 1985, April 24
- Henry Roth
- Mario Materassi
- ★
- 1987
- Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey
- Seo-Young Chu
- ★
- 1995
- Philip Roth
- Hana Wirth-Nesher
- ★
- 2001
- Twenty-first-century free verse
- Stephen Burt
- ★
- 2003
- Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing
- Greil Marcus
- ★
- 2008, November 4
- Barack Obama
- Kara Walker