American History Through Poetry with Professor Matthew Pinsker is a first-year seminar that meets at Dickinson College during fall semester 2025 on Mondays and Wednesdays at 1130am in Denny 112. Featured poets on the syllabus include Anne Bradstreet, Robert Frost, Emma Lazarus, Abraham Lincoln, Esther Popel, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, as well as several others. Participants in this seminar will write various types of close reading and critical essays, maintain a research journal, and will produce short videos about celebrated poems.
Video companion for Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883) produced by Olivia Whittaker, Dickinson College, Class of 2028