English 165

Book List

Bergvall, Caroline: Drift (2014); Conrad, CA: Ecodeviance (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (2014); Hong, Cathy Park: Engine Empire (2012); Kapil, Bhanu: Schizophrene (2011); Philip, M. NourbeSe: Zong! (2008); Rankine, Claudia: Citizen (2014); Santos Perez, Craig: from Unincorporated Territory [guma'] (2014); Santos Perez, Craig: from Unincorporated Territory [saina] (2010)

Other Readings and Media

A Course Reader with critical texts by W.T.J. Mitchell, Johanna Drucker, Katherine Hayles, Mark Hansen, Harryette Mullen, C.S. Giscombe, Charles Olson, Heriberto Yépez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Epeli Hau'ofa, Homi Bhabha, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Lauren Berlant, Rob Nixon, Donald Pease, Achille Mbembe, and Alexander Galloway.

Description

In this class we will read seven books of (very) contemporary poetry, which highlight the multiple national and linguistic identities that characterize the poetic subject in an increasingly globalized world. We will investigate different poetic strategies for representing race, gender, and sexuality in an allegedly "post-national," "post-racial" era and we will think about contemporary technologies--from social media to digital surveillance--that at once render human bodies hypervisible and invisible. Specific attention will be paid to how 21st-century poets use the physical format of the book to communicate with other representational technologies (video, photography, digital texts) as well as to whether it is possible to describe contemporary poetry as a trans-medial art.