2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Nov 16, 2024

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

ENG 276 - Ethnic America: Literature, Theory, Politics

In “The Race for Theory,” Barbara Christian asks who “Theory” is for and suggests that the drive to continuously invent “new” and “original” theories about “Literature” is rather a tool to maintain exclusive and elite boundaries around the academy, boundaries which ultimately constrain our imaginations of how we study literature. Taking seriously Christian’s proposal that creative work is itself media for theorizing, especially for artists from marginalized backgrounds, this course examines 20th century and contemporary Asian American, African American, Native American, and Latinx American cultural productions. We ask how these works theorize the historical and present-day geopolitics that shape the how racial and ethnic “Others” come to be in relationship with the United States and the forces that define their belonging within and/or exclusion from the physical and imagined boundaries of the nation, national and cultural citizenship, and political participation. Surveying a broad spectrum of literature, film, memoir, poetry, and theory, students will familiarize themselves with signal debates in studies of race, ethnicity, and migration and gain a foundation in contemporary Ethnic American literature.

For English majors, this course may satisfy the D-3 or E requirement but cannot double count. For English minors, this course can count either as a seminar in Theory or as a 200-level English seminar, but it cannot double count for the two requirements.

Prerequisites: Prerequisites: One 100-level English literature course (ENG 100-199) or permission of instructor

Course Designation/Attribute: DI

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically