In this course we will study the theoretical dynamics and practical parameters of popular learning in the nineteenth-century United States. How did nineteenth-century Americans understand and practice intellectual culture? What counted as desirable knowledge? Who could possess such knowledge, and how was knowledge obtained and shared? What can extant records of popular educational practices teach us about the creation and maintenance of national and regional identities and the politics of inclusion and exclusion? We will investigate these questions by reading recent rhetorical, historical, and literary scholarship on nineteenth-century U.S. popular education and conducting independent projects informed by primary research.