1507, the name "America" appears on a map / Toby Lester -- 1521 Mexico in America / Kirsten Silva Gruesz -- 1536, Alvar Nunez 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 -- A nearer neighbor to the Indians / Ted Widmer -- 1666, Anne Bradstreet / Wai Chee Dimock -- 1670, The American jeremiad / Emory Elliott ; 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 -- 1693-1694, Edward Taylor / Werner Sollors -- 1700, Samuel Sewall's "The selling of Joseph" / David Blight -- 1722, Benjamin Franklin, the Silence Dogood letters / Joyce E. Chaplin -- 1740, The Great Awakening / Joanne Van Der Woude -- Late 1740s ; 1814, Two national anthems / John Picker -- 1765, Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur / Leo Damrosch -- 1773, Phillis Wheatley / Rafia Zafar -- 1776, The Declaration of Independence / Frank Kelleter -- 1784, Charles Willson Peale / Michael Leja -- 1787, James Madison's "Notes of the debates in the federal convention" / Mitchell Meltzer -- 1787-1790, John Adams's "Discourses on Davila" / John Diggins -- 1791, Philip Freneau and "The National Gazette" / Jeffrey L. Pasley -- 1796, Washington's farewell address / Francois Furstenberg -- 1798, Mary Rowlandson and the Alien and Sedition Acts / Nancy Armstrong -- 1798, American Gothic / Marc Amfreville -- 1801, Jefferson's first inaugural address / Jan Ellis Lewis -- 1804, The matter of Haiti / Kaima Glover - 1809, Cupola of the world / Judith Richardson -- 1819, The Missouri crisis / John Stauffer -- 1820, Landscape with birds / Christoph Irmscher -- 1821, Sequoyah, the Cherokee syllabary / Lisa Brooks ; Junius Brutus Booth / Coppelia Kahn -- 1822, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the Ojibwe firefly, and Longfellow's "Hiawatha" / Davie Treuer -- 1825, Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School / Alan Wallach -- 1826, Songs of the republic / Steve Erickson -- 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's "Appeal, in four articles" / Tommie Shelby -- 1830, Jump Jim Crow / W. T. Lhamon, Jr. -- 1831, The "Cherokee Nation" decision / Philip Deloria -- 1832, President Jackson's bank veto / Dan Feller -- 1835, "Democracy in America" / Ted Widmer ; William Gilmore Simms's "The Yemassee" / Jeffrey Johnson ; "The Sacred harp" / Sean Wilentz -- 1836, The Alamo and Texas border writing / Norma E. Cantu ; Richard Henry Dana, Jr. / Kirsten Silva Gruesz -- 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Schollar" / James Conant -- 1838, "The Divinity School Address / Herwig Friedl ; The slave narrative / Caille Millner -- 1841, "The murders in the Rue Morgue" / Robert Clark -- 1846, James Russell Lowell's "Biglow papers" / Shelley Streeby ; Henry David Thoreau / Jonathan Arac -- 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville / Clark Blaise -- 1851, "Moby-Dick" / Greil Marcus ; "Uncle Tom's Cabin" / Beverly Lowry -- 1852, Hawthorne's "Blithedale romance" and utopian communities / Winifried Fluck ; Frederick Douglass's "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" / Liam Kennedy -- 1854, Maria Cummins and sentimental fiction / Cindy Weinstein -- 1855, Walt Whitman's "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, The journeys of "Little women" / Shirley Samuels -- 1865, Lincoln's 2nd inaugural address / Ted Widmer ; "Conditions of repose" / Robin Kelsey -- 1869, Carl Schurz / Michael Boyden -- 1872, All men and women are created equal / Laura Wexler -- 1875, The Winchester rifle / Merritt Roe Smith -- 1876, Melville in the dark / Kenneth W. Warren ; The art of telephony / Avital Ronell -- 1878, "How to make our ideas clear" / Christopher Hoodway -- 1879, John Muir and nature writing / Scott Slovic -- 1881, Henry James's "Portait of a Lady" / Alide Cagidemetrio -- 1884, Mark Twain's hairball / Ishmael Reed ; The linotype machine / Lisa Gitelman ; The Southwest imagined / Leah Dilworth -- 1885, The problem of error / James Conant ; Limits to violence / James Dawes ; Writing New Orleans / Andrei Codrescu -- 1888, The introduction of motion pictures / Jonathan Lethem -- 1889, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / Yael Schacher -- 1893, Chief Simon Pokagon and Native American literatuer / David Treuer -- 1895 / Ida B. Wells's "A Red Record" / Jacqueline Goldsby -- 1896, Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Lyrics of lowly life" / Judith Jackson Fossett ; Queen Lili'uokalani / Rob Wilson -- 1897, The Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Monument / Richard Powers -- 1898, Literature and imperialism / Amy Kaplan -- 1899, "McTeague" and 1924, "Greed" / Gilberto Perez -- 1900, Henry Adams / T. J. Jackson Lears ; "The Wizard of Oz" / Gerald Early ; 1900, "Sister Carrie" and 1905, "The House of Mirth" / Farah Jasmine Griffin -- 1901, Charles W. Chesnutt, the marrow of tradition / John Edgar Wideman -- 1901 & 1903, The problem of the color line / Arnold Rampersad -- 1903, "The real American has not yet arrived" / Aviva Taubenfeld ; The invention of the blues / Luc Sante ; One sees what one sees / Daniel Albright -- 1904, Henry James in America / Ross Posnock -- 1905, "Little Nemo in Slumberland" / Kerry Roeder ; 1906, The Azusa Street revival / RJ Smith ; The San Francisco Earthquake / Kathleen Moran -- "Alexander's Ragtime Band" / Philip Furia -- 1912, Lifeboats cut adrift / Alan Ackerman ; The lure of impossible things / Heather Love ; Tarzan begins his reign / Gerald Early -- 1913, A modernist moment / Bonnie Costello -- 1915, D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" / Richard Schickel ; Robert Frost / Christian Wiman -- 1917, The philosopher and the millionaire / Richard J. Bernstein -- 1920, Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" / Daphne A. Brooks -- 1921, Jean Toomer / Elizabeth Alexander -- 1922, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence / Anita Patterson -- 1923, Chaplinesque / David Thomson -- 1942, F. O. Mattiessen meets Russell Cheney / Robert Polito ; The Johnson-Reed Act and ethnic literature / Yael Schacher -- 1925, "The Great Gatsby" / Lan Tran ; Sinclair Lewis / Jeffrey Ferguson ; The Scopes trial / Michael Kazin ; Dorothy Parker / Catherine Keyser -- 1926, "Fire!" / Carla Kaplan ; Hardboiled / Walter Mosley ; The Book-of-the-Month Club / Joan Shelly Rubin -- 1927, Carl Sandburg and "The American Songbag" / Paul Muldoon ; "Free to develop their faculties" / Jeffrey Rosen -- 1928, Dilsey Gibson goes to church / Werner Sollors ; John Dos Passos / Phoebe Kosman ; The mouse that whistled / Karal Ann Marling -- 1930, "You're swell!" / Robert Gottlieb ; "The Silent Enemy" / Micah Treuer ; Grant Wood's "American Gothic" / Sarah Vowell -- 1931, Nevada legalizes gambling / David Thomson -- 1932, Edmund Wilson's "The American jitters" / Anthony Grafton ; Arthur Mill / Andrea Most -- 1932, The River Rouge plant and industrial beauty / John M. Staudenmaiser, S.J. ; Ned Cobb / Robert Cantwell -- 1933, "Baby Face" is censored / Stephanie Zacharek ; FDR's first Fireside Chat / Paula Rabinowitz -- 1934, Robert Penn Warren / Howell Raines -- 1935, The Popular Front / Angela Miller ; The skyscraper / Sarah Whiting ; Alcoholics Anonymous / Michael Tolkin ; "Porgy and Bess" / John Rockwell -- 1936, "Gone with the Wind" and "Absalom, Absalom!" / Carolyn Porter ; Two days in Harlem / Adam Bradley ; "Life" begins / Michael Lesy -- 1938, Superman / Douglas Wolk ; Jelly Roll Morton speaks / Marybeth Hamilton -- 1939, Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" / Robert O'Meally ; Up from invisibility / Josef Jarab -- 1940, "No way like the American way" / Erika Doss -- 1940-44, Preston Sturges / Douglas McGrath -- 1941, An insolent style / Carrie Tirado Bramen ; "Citizen Kane" / Joseph McBride ; The word "multicultural" / Werner Sollors -- 1943, Hemmingway's paradise, Hemingway's prose / Keith Taylor -- 1944, The 2nd Bill of Rights / Cass R. Sunstein -- 1945, Bebop / Ingrid Monson ; Thomas Pynchon and modern war / Glenda Carpio ; The atom bomb / Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi -- 1946, Integrating the military / Gerald Early -- 1947, Tennessee Williams / Camille Paglia -- 1948, Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics" / David A. Mindell ; Saul Bellow / Ruth Wisse -- 1949-50, "The birth of cool" / Ted Gioia -- 1950, "Damned busy painting" / T. J. Clark -- 1951, A poet among painters / Mark Ford ; "The Catcher in the Rye" / Gish Jen ; James Jones's "From Here to Eternity" / Lindsay Waters ; A soft voice / M. Lynn Weiss -- 1952, Elia Kazan and the blacklist in Hollywood / Michael Ventura ; C. L. R. James / Donald E. Pease -- 1953, The song in country music / Dave Hickey -- 1954, Wallace Stevens's "Collected poems" / Helen Vendler -- 1955, "The self-respect of my people" / Monica L. Miller ; A. J. Liebling and the Marciano-Moore fight / Carlo Rotella ; A generation in miniature / Richard Candida Smith ; Nabokov's "Lolita" / Stephen Schiff -- 1956, "Roll Over Beethoven" / James Miller -- 1957, Dr. Seuss / Philip Nel -- 1959, "Nobody's perfect" / William J. Mann -- 1960, "Psycho" / William Beard ; More than a game / Michael MacCambridge -- 1961, JFK's inaugural address and "Catch-22" / Charles Taylor ; The author as advertisement / David Thomson -- 1962, Bob Dylan writes "Song to Woody" / Joshua Clover ; "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" / Howard Hampton -- 1963, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" / George Hutchinson -- 1964, Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" / Peter Sacks ; "The last stand on earth" / Gary Kamiya -- 1965, The Council on Interracial Books for Children / Dianne Johnson ; "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" / David Bradley -- 1968, Norman Mailer / Mary Gaitskill ; The illusory babels of language / Hal Foster ; The plight of conservative literature / Michael Kimmage -- 1969, Eilzabeth Bishop's "Complete poems" / Laura Quinney ; The first Asian Americans / Hua Hsu ; The eye of Vietnam / Thi Phuong-Lan Bui -- 1970, Maya Angelou, Toni MOrrison, Alice Walker / Cheryl A. Wall ; Linda Lovelace / Anne Marlowe -- 1973, Loisaida literature / Frances R. Aparicio ; Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" / Maureen N. McLane -- 1975, Gayl Jones / Robert O'Meally -- 1981, Toni Morrison / Farah Jasmine Griffin -- 1982, Edmund White's "A Boy's Own Story" / Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum ; "Wild Style" / Mua Hsu ; Maya Lin's wall / Anne M. Wagner ; Harriet Wilson / Saidiya V. Hartman -- 1985, Henry Roth / Mario Materassi -- 1987, Maxine Hong Kingston's "Tripmaster Monkey" / Seio Young Chu -- 1995, Philip Roth / Hana Wirth-Nesher -- 2001, 21st-century free verse / Stephen Burt -- 2003, Richard Powers's "The Time of Our Singing" / Greil Marcus -- 2005, Hurricane Katrina / Greil Marcus & Werner Sollors -- 2008, Barack O'Bama / Kara Walker.