English 203

Graduate Readings: American Genres

Section	Semester	Instructor	Time	Location	Course Areas
4	Fall 2018	Serpell, C. Namwali	TTh 2-3:30	180 Barrows	American Literature Graduate Courses

Book List

Baum, L. Frank: The Wizard of Oz; Cain, James: The Postman Always Rings Twice; Crichton, Michael: Jurassic Park; Highsmith, Patrica: The Talented Mr Ripley; King, Stephen: Carrie; L'Engle, Madeleine: A Wrinkle in Time; Lovecraft, H.P.: The Complete Fiction; Ludlum, Robert: The Bourne Identity; Machado, Carmen Maria: Her Body & Other Parties; Portis, Charles: True Grit; Slim, Iceberg: Pimp: The Story of My Life; Steel, Danielle: The Gift; Tan, Amy: Joy Luck Club; Walker, Alice: The Color Purple

Description

We’ll discuss canonical works of American genre fiction, except for the one genre we usually read: “literary fiction.” Our genres include: children’s lit, YA, spy thriller, fantasy, science fiction, magical realism, noir, crime fiction, neo-slave narrative, weird, western, and horror. While we’ll dip into scholarship along the way, our primary aim will be to use the novels to generate our own theories. Two essays. One novel or two novellas a week, but they're all page turners!

NB: I won't be ordering books at the Cal bookstore but for the first two: Baum's The Wizard of Oz and Lovecraft's Complete Fiction.

This course satisfies the Group 5 (Twentieth Century) requirement.

Other Recent Sections of This Course

Spring, 2019

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
203/1	Graduate Readings: William Faulkner and the Historical Novel	Goble, Mark
203/2	Graduate Readings	Miller, Jennifer
203/3	Graduate Readings: The Queer and the Oriental	Leong, Andrew Way
203/4	Graduate Readings: Renaissance Drama	Knapp, Jeffrey
203/5	Graduate Readings: Nineteenth-Century U. S. Historical Poetics	Otter, Samuel

Fall, 2018

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
203/1	Graduate Readings: Allegorical Moments: Public, Private, and the Writing of Everyday Life	Hejinian, Lyn
203/5	Graduate Readings: Prospectus Workshop	Abel, Elizabeth

Spring, 2018

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
203/1	Graduate Readings: Radical Enlightenment?	Goldstein, Amanda Jo
203/2	Graduate Readings: The Novel in Theory	Hale, Dorothy J.
203/3	Graduate Readings: Prospectus and Grant Workshop	Thornbury, Emily V.
203/4	Graduate Readings: Digital Humanities for Medieval Studies	Nolan, Maura
203/5	Graduate Readings: Contemporary Chicanx/Latinx Novels	Gonzalez, Marcial

Fall, 2017

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
203/1	Graduate Readings: Caribbean Literature and Culture	Ellis, Nadia
203/2	Graduate Readings: Comparative Colonialisms: Latin America and the U.S.	Saldaña, Maria
203/3	Graduate Readings: Materiality	Flynn, Catherine

Spring, 2017

Course & Section	Course Name	Course Areas
203/1	Graduate Readings: World Systems Theory and the Asian Anglophone Novel	Lye, Colleen
203/2	Graduate Readings: The Political Economy of Life and Death in African American Literature and Culture	JanMohamed, Abdul R.

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