In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States after a campaign that some commentators identified as nativist. This course surveys American literary articulations of nativism from the 1850s to the present in prose and film. We will ask such questions as: What is nativism? How is American cultural identity constituted? What political possibilities does the idea of culture produce? What are the continuities and discontinuities in the story of American nativism across the past two centuries? What can the history of American nativism teach us about contemporary American identity? Planned texts for the course include work by Edgar Allen Poe, Frank Norris, Jack London, Willa Cather, and others. We will also study political speeches, writing, and commentary from the 2016 campaign and Trump's presidency. (B, G)