How does a topic – any topic – become a school subject? And how does a given subject find its place in the school system? What factors render it appropriate to a particular grade level, kind of school, brand of teacher, or type of student? The answers to these questions vary from one subject and one era to another. Indeed, every subject has its own curricular history. Individual curricular subjects in turn comprise a larger knowledge category that we typically refer to as “the curriculum.” While, in its most rudimentary sense, this term designates a school's regular course of study, the historical phenomenon of the curriculum is not regular but variable and contingent. Curricula might or might not vary from school to school within and across specific time periods. The changing historical incarnations of the curriculum serve as what Richard Hofstadter and C. DeWitt Hardy call “a barometer by which we may measure the cultural pressures that operate upon the school.” In the pages that follow, I trace the history of one curricular subject in particular. Although still most commonly known as “American literature,” that designation is now on the brink of change. In that sense, this book frames both the beginning and the end of “American literature” in the curriculum.

Although elementary and high school curricula widely offered American literature by the late nineteenth century, colleges and universities typically resisted its encroachment on the curriculum until the mid-twentieth century.