AMST 40237 - Literature across the Americas

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

American Studies

Description:

National borders mark our Americas today, but for the first European explorers the landscapes of their "new world" were uncharted and unbounded. The newly encountered land seemed to invite utopian dreams even as it became the arena for genocidal violence. It also invited the act of writing as one mode of inscribing narratives of order and cultural continuity, texts that today retain their power to convey scenes of intense emotional and existential crisis. To reconsider these moments of violence and possibility, we will approach early American literature intra-hemispherically, primarily in English and English translation, although bilingual students participating in the Language Across the Curriculum Program will read selected texts in Spanish. We will read comparatively in order to ask trans-American questions. For example, what do we learn when we juxtapose Cortés' invasion of the Mexican empire to King Philip's war in the New England colonies? What comparisons arise between the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz; between the captivity adventures of Cabeza de Vaca and Mary Rowlandson? How have native nations across the Americas written or spoken the loss of worlds? How have revolutionaries imagined new ones in Latin America and in the United States? At what point do separate histories and literatures reveal commonality and when and how do they point to distinctions? Perhaps most crucially, how might such cross-cultural readings intimate a new dissolution, or re-alignment, of national boundaries in the American hemisphere? The authors and subjects noted above will serve as key markers, but we will also read primary works by William Bradford, Gaspar Peréz de Villagrá, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Sarah Kemble Knight, William Apess, and others as we reconsider the literatures and histories of the Americas in a cross-national paradigm. Students will be expected to write three short papers, take a mid-term and final exam, develop group projects, and participate actively in class. Students participating in the LAC program will meet separately for weekly discussions in Spanish.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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