English 165

Special Topics: Race, Literature, and the Archive

Book List

Chesnutt , Charles: Conjure Woman & Other Stories of the Color Line; Hopkins, Pauline: Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self: ; Wright, Richard: 12 Million Black Voices

Description

In this course we will read works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American writing that engage with what we might call extra-literary modes of documenting racial difference. Drawing on insights from comparative media studies and critical race theory, we will ask how literature “archives” race in communication with developments in both the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, and musicology) and media technology (sound recording, photography, and film). From the earliest transcriptions of African American spirituals to ethnographies and novels of the colonial periphery, our readings explore how archives actually construct what they preserve—simultaneously documenting and producing social and cultural difference along lines of race.

This course is open to English majors only.

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