ENGL 541-001 – Studies in American Literature<\/a><\/strong>
\n“Tracing Race in American Literature”<\/p>\nStudies in American Literature Since 1890<\/strong>
\nTerm 1<\/strong>
\nFridays, 1:30 am – 4:30 pm<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cFaulkner in Absalom, Absalom!<\/u> spends the entire book tracing race, and you can\u2019t find it.\u00a0 No one can see it, even the character who is<\/u> black can\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 (Toni Morrison interview)<\/p>\nWe will read a selection of essential works of American literature that situate their complex and violent tracings of race in relation to the history of slavery, racial segregation and Jim Crow, Civil Rights, mass incarceration, and voter suppression. How can \u201crace\u201d be difficult to find in a society dominated, since 1619, by the division between black and white?<\/p>\n
There will be two reading lists. The primary list will be common to all participants in the seminar, the basis of weekly discussions and presentations. Participants will also help to compile a secondary, annotated reading list–dynamic and open-ended–in support of research projects both small and large to be shared with the group.<\/p>\n
Final selections for the primary list will be drawn from the following:<\/p>\n
\n- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave<\/em> (1845)<\/li>\n
- Herman Melville, Benito Cereno<\/em> (1855)<\/li>\n
- Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/em> (1861)<\/li>\n
- Kate Chopin, \u201cDesir\u00e9e\u2019s Baby\u201d (1893)<\/li>\n
- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk<\/em> (1903)<\/li>\n
- James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man<\/em> (1912)<\/li>\n
- W.E.B. Du Bois, \u201cWhite Imperialism\u201d (1914)<\/li>\n
- Jean Toomer, Cane<\/em> (1923)<\/li>\n
- Ernest Hemingway, \u201cThe Battler\u201d (1925)<\/li>\n
- Nella Larsen, Passing<\/em> (1929)<\/li>\n
- William Faulkner, Light in August<\/em> (1932)<\/li>\n
- William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!<\/em> (1936)<\/li>\n
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God<\/em> (1937)<\/li>\n
- Richard Wright, Native Son<\/em> (1940)<\/li>\n
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man<\/em> (1952)<\/li>\n
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time<\/em> (1963)<\/li>\n
- Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X<\/em> (1965)<\/li>\n
- Angela Davis, \u201cReflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves\u201d (1972)<\/li>\n
- Don DeLillo, End Zone<\/em> (1972)<\/li>\n
- Wallace Terry, ed., Bloods:\u00a0 Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: \u00a0An Oral History<\/em> (1984)<\/li>\n
- Toni Morrison, Beloved<\/em> (1987)<\/li>\n
- Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination<\/em> (1992)<\/li>\n
- Hortense Spillers, Black, White and In Color:\u00a0 Essays on American Literature and Culture<\/em>\u00a0(2003)<\/li>\n
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me<\/em> (2015)<\/li>\n
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, \u201cThe First White President\u201d (2017)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Requirements:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Active participation in the seminar’s exchange and discussion, and<\/li>\n
- a ten-minute informal presentation, 10%<\/li>\n
- a two-page essay (distributed and read aloud), 15%<\/li>\n
- a seminar presentation, 25%<\/li>\n
- a final essay, 50%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Epigraphs:<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cMy father was a white man.\u201d\u00a0 (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave<\/em>)<\/p>\n\u201cWhat tangled skeins are the genealogies of slavery!\u00a0 Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon blood coursing through the veins of American slaves?\u201d\u00a0 (Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl<\/em>)<\/p>\n\u201c\u2019It is a lie; it is not true, I am white! Look at my hair, it is brown; and my eyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair,\u2019 seizing his wrist. \u2018Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,\u2019 she laughed hysterically.\u201d (\u201cDesir\u00e9e\u2019s Baby\u201d by Kate Chopin)<\/p>\n
\u201cHe watched his body grow white out of the darkness like a Kodak print emerging from the liquid.\u201d (Faulkner, Light in August<\/em>)<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re all black to the white man, but we\u2019re a thousand and one different colors.\u00a0 Turn around, look<\/em> at each other!\u201d (Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X<\/em>)<\/p>\n\u201cAbraham was black.\u00a0 Did you know that?\u00a0 Mary the mother of Jesus was black.\u00a0 Rembrandt and Bach had some Masai blood.\u00a0 It’s all in the history books if you look carefully enough.\u00a0 Tolstoy was three-eighths black.\u00a0 Euclid was six-fifths black.\u00a0 Not that it means anything.\u00a0 Not that any of it matters in the least.\u00a0 Lord, I think I’m beginning to babble.”\u00a0 (Taft Robinson, in Don DeLillo\u2019s End Zone<\/em>)<\/p>\n\u201cthe people who think they are white\u201d (Coates, Between the World and Me<\/em>)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Courses 2022-2023<\/strong><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/english.ubc.ca\/courses\/?session=2022w<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2019-2020 ENGL 541-001 – Studies in American Literature “Tracing Race in American Literature” Studies in American Literature Since 1890 Term 1 Fridays, 1:30 am – 4:30 pm \u201cFaulkner in Absalom, Absalom! spends the entire book tracing race, and you can\u2019t find it.\u00a0 No one can see it, even the character who is black can\u2019t see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2643,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mzeitlin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}