C1001: Literature Humanities: Literature Humanities is a yearlong survey of important texts in a Western European tradition, from Homer to Toni Morrison. While not a comprehensive survey by any means, the texts we will read in this course have often been considered especially important elements in ongoing conversations between writers and thinkers that have taken place over hundreds and even thousands of years, and which have contributed to the foundations of many of the social, intellectual, and literary institutions that continue to shape our world today. The course will particularly focus on the many ways in which writers and thinkers converse with other writers and thinkers: that is, the ways in which writers read, understand, misunderstand, quote, steal from, adapt, mutate, develop, critique, abuse, willfully ignore or otherwise engage with other writers and with a body of literary and cultural resources from a particular tradition. This course is not intended to be a reverent appreciation of “great books.” Rather, this course will aim to develop in students an ability to read critically. Reading critically entails reading a text both generously and skeptically, looking closely at the language of the text itself, and bringing to light the ways in which the complexity of that language thickens, complicates, or enriches our understanding of a text. Reading critically aims to build a body of readings and ideas that can be used to make our own ideas. The aim of this course is not so much to give students ideas to think about as to give students ideas to think with. We will not only overhear a conversation that has been taking place over thousands of years, but attempt to develop the habits of mind in which our own ideas arise from having conversations with others.
English 101: Literature, Citizenship, and American Identity: “The very word ‘America,’” writes the novelist and essayist James Baldwin, “remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.” In this class we will explore the question of American identity through literary works such as short stories and essays, as well as through sociological, political, and legal writings. We will ask along with the writers we read: What does it mean to be American? Who is an American, and how does one become one? Is American identity defined by birth, by culture, by citizenship? Who and what gets to be called “American,” and when, and why? Who and what gets left out and what are the consequences of exclusion? Our objective will not be to create a stable definition of American identity, but rather to explore how other writers have conceived of American identity so that we can learn to develop and critique our own ideas about American identity through writing.
English 101: Reading and Writing Race in American Literature: In this course, we will explore fiction, speeches, essays, articles, and laws, alongside critical and theoretical writings that seek to understand, shape, and challenge meanings of race in America. We will address these questions across various historical periods, from the years before the Civil War to today, primarily through the work of Black authors. Some questions we will ask are: What is the meaning of race in America? What is the history of this idea, how and why did it develop, and how has it changed over time? What relation does race have to identity? What role do writers play in creating and shaping the meaning of race in America, and how do writers work to address American systems of enslavement, segregation, and racial violence, often in the face of an indifferent public?
English 225: American Literature, Origins to 1865: In this course we will explore literary texts and other writings from the area roughly (but not exclusively) comprising the modern continental United States from the period before European contact to the American Civil War. Surveying such a huge period of time and so much geographic and cultural diversity presents us with many challenges. I ask you to try to approach this literature with an open mind and witness features of American history and culture that may be strange, surprising, or disturbing. Some questions we will ask together are: Who or what is an American? What, if anything, is “American” about American literature? What is literary about it? Throughout the course will pay particular attention to the social, political, historical, and cultural contexts of the texts we read.
English 226: American Literature, 1865-1925: This course aims to introduce students to some of the major developments in American literature and culture from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century with a focus on the development of literary realism and writers who called its authority into question, especially writers associated with regionalism, naturalism, modernism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Through readings of novels and short stories we will address some of the period’s central questions about the meanings and purposes of fiction, including its capacity to realistically represent reality, its status as a fine art, and its ability to represent a diverse and rapidly changing nation.
English 328: Literature of the American Renaissance: The 1840s and 1850s have often been seen as a period of extraordinary literary and intellectual flourishing in the United States; it was also a period marked by extraordinary political, social, and racial tensions which culminated in the Civil War. In this class we explore some of the literature of this period with particular attention to ways in which writers both engaged with and evaded the urgencies of their historical moment by looking at questions of individuality and self-reliance, nationality and citizenship, and freedom and fugitivity. We will also assess the idea of an “American Renaissance” and work together to develop new ways of reading this literature in our own moment of political division and social crisis.