ENG 293 - Special Topics in African American Literature

This course examines Toni Morrison’s fiction as an inquiry into familiar strangeness. “Familiar strangeness” names the paradox that vileness, violence, and villainy, attributes we typically reject as inhuman, are, in fact, deeply human. Morrison’s fiction insists that what horrifies us most is often what mirrors us most closely. Her novels refuse easy characterizations and categorizations of Being and experience. Rather than locating morality in fixed distinctions between good and evil, innocence and guilt, Morrison foregrounds relational and situational ethics, or ethical life as something forged in intimacy, kinship, memory, and survival. People as well as acts that appear monstrous or unforgivable within Western moral paradigms are refigured as responses to unbearable circumstances, forcing readers to confront the limits of judgment itself. Morrison does not excuse violence or cruelty, instead, she interrogates the ethical systems that demand condemnation without accounting for the historical production of harm. Thus in this class, we will explore the extent to which the Morrisonian novel might be read as a sustained critique of dominant Western conceptions of ethics and morality, particularly those grounded in universality, individualism, and moral abstraction. Through close reading of six novels, we will interrogate how that which is vile, or violent, or villainous, functions not simply as evil, but as a social, historical, and existential condition, one that reveals the fragility and resilience of human life. For English majors, this course satisfies the D-3 requirement. May be repeatable for credit.

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

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically