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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Understanding U.S. Latino/a literature, art, and film through its many allusions to and representations of traditional icons and historic figures as well as legends, myths, popular figures, and action heroes/heroines of the Americas (including those with origins in Native American, Latino/a, African, Asian, and European cultures).
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3.00 Credits
C. Vann Woodward, the late eminent historian of the U.S. South, once noted that the study of the U.S. South stood "in great need of comparative dimensions if suitable comparative partners could be found," comparative projects, he added, beyond the now stale North-South axis. Woodward was speaking specifically of comparative history, but other disciplines such as English, can also generate such comparative projects. This course will examine a significant range of two distinctive yet comparable bodies of American literature, mostly twentieth century, produced respectively in the U.S. South and in the culture area that Americo Paredes called "Greater Mexico." Americo Paredes, a U.S. intellectual and literary figure akin to Woodward, coined the phrase, Greater Mexico, to refer to all peoples of Mexican-origin wherever they may be geographically found although they continue to be concentrated in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Our close examination of such literary works, all written in English, will proceed from a broad understanding of these two cultural-geographical areas as historically created peripheral zones relative to a dominant capitalist core even as we will also take account of direct connections between these two peoples. Authors: Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh, Caballero: A Historical Novel ; Richard Wright, Uncle Tom's Children; Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs; William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!; Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Americo Paredes, George Washington Gomez: A Mexico-Texan Novel; Walker Percy, The Movie-Goer; Rolando Hinojosa, The Valley and Rites and Witnesses; Mary Karr, The Liars' Club; John Phillip Santos, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation; Bobbie Anne Mason, Shiloh and Other Stories; Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.
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3.00 Credits
A critical examination of how "fictions" in the artistic sense (novels, stories, and movies) have both fostered and challenged "fictions" in the ideological sense, that is, the lies and mystifications about race that pervade American cultural life.
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3.00 Credits
This course is intended for students who have already taken a Fiction Writing course (or the equivalent) and who are seriously interested in writing fiction, and graduate students who are not in the Creative Writing program. The expectation is that the student is beyond the point of requiring assignments to generate stories. Over the semester, in a workshop setting, student stories will be taken through various stages: due attention will be paid to revision, rewriting, polishing, editing, with a goal that the stories be brought as close as possible to the point of submission as finished work. Practical as well as theoretical issues will be investigated; there will be assigned readings from a variety of fiction authors.
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3.00 Credits
This is the most advanced undergraduate course in poetry writing offered by the Department, and while it does not require existing skills in writing poetry, it assumes an existing interest in poetry developed through reading. The course will extend students' knowledge of lyric poetry both as readers and as writers, emphasizing its distinctive, performative qualities. A safe but critical workshop environment is offered for adventures in reading and writing; the course will enrich an understanding of poetic language for those seeking to enhance their enjoyment, as well as opening creative possibilities for those drawn primarily to writing poetry.
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3.00 Credits
An exploration of the main literary and artistic movements of the historical European avant-garde: Cubism, Vorticism, Italian and Russian Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism.
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3.00 Credits
The aim of this course will be to compare and contrast what one might loosely term ancient (medieval, early modern) and post-modern approaches to the reading of texts, following the twin approaches of theoretical exposition and practical application, neither of which can be sustained without the intervention of the other. It will be necessary to rely on concrete examples of the ancient and contemporary methods. The examples in the first half of the semester will be Augustine's On Christian Teaching and Literal Interpretation of Genesis and Derrida's Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Dissemination. This double reading will put us in a position to take as our examples Augustine's Confessions and Derrida's Circonfession in the second half of the semester. Certain questions - which can sometimes but not always be answered in the conventional sense - will persist during our readings. These will include: What is philosophy? What is literature? What is the relation between philosophy and exegesis? What is the relation between literature and exegesis? What is the relation between philosophy and literature? Language requirement: Latin and/or French desirable but not necessary. Written requirement: one final essay (20 pages) either a). on one of the texts or authors studied in the course, or b). applying the methodologies discussed to another philosophical or literary text of your choice.
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3.00 Credits
An introduction to literary theories of gender and culture in film, literature, and other media.
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3.00 Credits
What makes an interpretation of a literary text valid? The reconstruction of what the author meant by his text, intentionalists say. But does one understand enough if one just goes back to what the author had in mind, some anti-intentionalists ask. Both intentionalists and anti-intentionalists claim to derive their respective hermeneutic norms from insights into the nature of textual meaning in general and literary semantics in particular. This seminar will focus on the relationship between the theory and methodology of interpretation and literary theory. We will analyze major contributions by, among others, Hans-Georg Gadamer, E.D. Hirsch, Paul Ric'ur, Frank Kermode, Umberto Eco, and Richard Rorty. Note: Readings in English and German, discussions in English.
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3.00 Credits
This interdisciplinary course focuses on "cultural studies" as a critique of larger systems of domination and will introduce you to major voices of African American critical theory. Paul Gilroy suggests that, "popular culture always has its base in the experiences, the pleasures, the memories, the traditions of the people." Black Cultural Studies is interested in the wider sphere of critical practice, national politics and how popular culture can both resist and perpetuate the idea of America. While visual and literary studies have been seen as historically separate disciplines, we will use theories from each to study those forms of self-representation that defy disciplinary boundaries. With an eye on the way black popular culture is mythologized through commodification and rife with contradictions, we will examine the conflicted ways in which "racial" identities and differences have been constructed throughout U.S. culture. We will consider how new debates about the history of race have changed American literary, historical and cultural studies. We will put theoretical tracks in conversation with literature, music, visual art, the body, film and food and use these cultural texts as a method of engaging sustained social and political critique.
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