Class Archive

31AC/1

Literature of American Cultures:
The Wild, Wild West-- California and the Politics of Possibility

TuTh 2-3:30

The Golden State – fast fame, endless sunshine, and gold in the ground. California has long occupied an iconic place in the American and global imagination as the land of limitless opportunity, utopian pinnacle of the promise getting ahead, m...(read more)

100/1

The Seminar on Criticism:
"Atlantic Haunts, Black Possession"

MW 5-6:30

An introduction to black diasporic criticism, this seminar uses various angles of approach toward the notion of the spirit, the haunt, and the possession in order to trace a tradition of black presence English literatures and cultures. We will...(read more)

100/2

The Seminar on Criticism:
The African-American Essay

TuTh 3:30-5

Readers of James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and other black writers have often turned to their essays with a goal of better understanding their literary work.  In this course we will consider the African-Ameri...(read more)

133T/1

African American Literature and Culture:
The Art of Black Diaspora

MW 2-3

The black diaspora is, amongst other things, a literary tradition: a complex, cross-generic set of texts produced by black writers located in almost every nation across the globe, equal in complexity and variation to the modern concept of...(read more)

166/1

Special Topics:
Form and Invention in Native American Literature

MW 2-3

Book List to come.

This course explores a wide range of literary production by Native American/Indigenous writers from the nineteenth century to present, drawing out the various linguistic and literary influences present in the works...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability:
States of Exception

TuTh 12:30-2

From the blind poet to the fat detective to the “twisted” villain, literature often foregrounds bodily difference as an exceptional condition. What are the stakes and effects of literature’s interest in the exception—and in ...(read more)

53/1

Asian American Literature and Culture:
Voice, Text, Image

TTh 6:30 - 8

Professor Leong's course is listed both as English 53 and as Asian American Studies (ASAMST) 20C. It is the same course (same time, same room; slightly different title). If you cannot enroll directly in English 53, you can enroll via ASAMST...(read more)

100/5

The Seminar on Criticism:
Indigenous Autobiography

MWF 12-1

As we develop our critical reading and writing skills, we will examine a wide range of Native American personal narratives, from pre-contact pictographic narratives painted on animal hides and later drawn in ledgerbooks to nineteenth-century as-tol...(read more)

C136/1

Topics in American Studies:
Harlem Renaissance

MW 12-2

This course explores the social, cultural, political, and personal awakenings in the literature, art, and music of the Negro Renaissance or the New Negro Movement, now commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. This is remembered as a time (roughly ...(read more)

137T/1

Topics in Chicano Literature and Culture:
Riding Chicanx Literature’s First Wave and Beyond, c/s

MW 5-6:30

“The student of Chicano literature will look back at this group and this first period as the foundation of whatever is to come, even if only as the generation against whom those to come rebel. The best of the best will survive—but then ...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Racial Joy

TTh 9:30-11

Is happiness possible in a world of ecological catastrophe, economic inequality, and racial oppression? This course will explore recent literature by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American writers and poets preoccupied with the nature of joy...(read more)

190/5

Research Seminar:
Repression and Resistance

TTh 2-3:30

In this course, we’ll analyze representations of repression and resistance in a collection of contemporary literary works, mainly novels. We’ll examine various forms of repression—physical, social, political, and psychological&mda...(read more)

133T/1

African American Literature and Culture:
Humor and the Neo-Slave Narrative

TTh 8-9:30

At the turn of the 21st century a common phrase was brought i...(read more)

137B/1

Chicana/o Literature and Culture Since 1910

MWF 12-1

This course will focus exclusively on the study of Chicanx/La...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
Postcolonial Fiction

TTh 8-9:30

Beginning with a preliminary study of the discussion and deba...(read more)

165/3

Special Topics:
Rebel Slaves and Dark Doubles: Black Women Writers' Engagements with Jane Eyre

TTh 11-12:30

Secret marriages and women hidden away in attics, portentous ...(read more)

166/2

Special Topics:
Burn it Down/Build it Up: Protest, Dissent, and the Politics of Resistance

TTh 11-12:30

This course takes up the question of protest and dissent &nda...(read more)

166/3

Special Topics:
"Race, Social Class, Creative Writing, and Difference"

TTh 2-3:30

One of the ideas behind this course offering is that poetry a...(read more)

175/1

Literature and Disability

TTh 12:30-2

We will read drama, poetry  and short fiction by contemporary authors with disabilities. Requirements will include two analytical essays, a group presentation project and a take-home final exam.

This is a core course for the disabili...(read more)

190/11

Research Seminar:
Latinx Modernism

TuTh 2-3:30

In this course we will investigate the prodigious archive of ...(read more)

133T/1

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
The African American Essay

MWF 11-12

Readers of James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and other writers, often turn to their essays with a mind to better understanding their novels and other literary writing.  In this course we will consider the Afric...(read more)

133T/2

Topics in African American Literature and Culture:
The Art of the Black Diaspora

TTh 9:30-11

The black diaspora is, amongst other things, a literary tradition: a complex, cross-generic set of texts produced by black writers located in almost every nation across the globe, equal in complexity and variation to the modern concept of...(read more)

138/1

Studies in World Literature in English:
(Post)Colonial Fiction

TTh 11-12:30

This course will examine some British colonial novels within the socio-political-economic context of late British colonialism and some (post-)colonial novels written after the devolution of formal British colonialism...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
Literature in the Age of Extremes, 1900-1945

Lectures TTh 10-11 + one hour of discussion section per week (sec. 101: F 9-10; sec. 102: F 10-11; sec. 103: F 11-12; sec. 104: F 12-1)

The aim of this course will be to capture the aesthetic and political extremes of the twentieth century’s first half. We will examine conflicting efforts to bridge the boundary between art and life against the backdrop of two world wars and e...(read more)

166/4

Special Topics:
Four Nobelists: Czeslaw Milosz, Derek Walcott, Toni Morrison, and Seamus Heaney

TWTh 1-3:30

In this course, we’ll explore the lives and works of Cz...(read more)

166AC/1

Special Topics in American Cultures:
American Hustle: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the American Dream; Or, Capitalism Kills

TWTh 4-6:30

This course, which constitutes a survey of ethnic American literature, asks about the desires, imagination, and labor that go into the American dream. What is the relationship between immigration and dreams of upward mobility in America? This cours...(read more)