English 166

Other Readings and Media

Faulkner, ?The Bear,? Go Down, Moses, Absalom; Garcia Marquez, Collected Stories, Living to Tell the Tale, One Hundred Years of Solitude; Morrison, Toni, Sula, Beloved; Cisneros, The House On Mango Street, Carmero, Or Puro Cuento

Description

This course is an intensive and rigorous course in the literature of the Americas and in trans-American literary and cultural criticism. We will be reading intensively and extensively, and the format of our course requires constant attendance. Our course is a detailed trans-American study of William Faulkner, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, Toni Morrison, and Sandra Cisneros? major imaginative writings in the aesthetic and geopolitical contexts of the South and the Global South. What does it mean to read, South by South? South by North? We will be considering the idea of the South as a real and imaginary territory, a rich ideological geography, and a geo-culture, where regional mythology, ethnic and racial formations and divisions, national and transnational contestations, and the new imperialism together produce extraordinary narratives. Additionally, our course will look at the photographs of the South by Walker Evans, and some of the Global South's paintings by Kara Walker and Fernando Botero, among others. Throughout this special topics course, we will grapple with the research question--do the Am?ricas have a common literature?