Modern Literature & Culture Sample Courses
ENGL 490: Topics in American Literature – Dr. Suzanne Bost
This seminar will focus on what it means to be human in a time and place where human lives are intertwined with technology, when the byproducts of human creation are destroying plant and animal habitats, and when many human lives continue to be treated as if they were expendable or unlivable. In the last 20-30 years, a variety of posthumanist theories have emerged that rethink common assumptions about the role of the human in our world. Building from the insights of postmodernism, critical studies of science and technology, animal studies, postcolonial studies, environmental studies, disability studies, and feminist new materialisms, posthumanist theorists have challenged anthropocentrism as well as Humanist values like autonomy, rationality, objectivity, and universal equality. This course will begin with an introduction to a variety of these approaches to posthumanism and then turn to works of contemporary literature that push our thinking beyond the limits of the human. In our readings of theoretical works by Cary Wolfe, Karen Barad, Rosi Braditotti, Donna Haraway, Stacy Alaimo, and Claire Colebrook alongside literary works by Justin Torres, William Gibson, Octavia Butler, J.M. Coetzee, Salvador Plascencia, Susanne Antonetta, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, we will examine the ways in which misogyny, racism, and environmental toxicity demand a rethinking of the status of the human as well as ethical alternatives that emerge from other-than-Humanist traditions. Assignments will include one class presentation, regular response papers, a final conference paper, and a final exam.
ENGL 484: Literature of the Jazz Age – Dr. David Chinitz
A decade of rapid and profound social change, the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s was also extraordinarily conscious of its own modernity. In this course we will examine the changes in culture, both high and low, that marked this period. Our syllabus will be interdisciplinary: we will cross over into music, film, and other genres in order to study the period more comprehensively, and to examine the cross-fertilization and mutual influences among the arts as the age of literary modernism reached its peak. We will read works by such authors as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, T. S. Eliot, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, E. E. Cummings, and F. Scott Fitzgerald as we visit such topics as, for example, the cult of the primitive, the reinvention of the “New Woman,” the Harlem Renaissance, the rise of modern popular culture, and the relationship of jazz to all these phenomena. Work by Jazz-Age and contemporary critics will supplement our primary readings.
ENGL 485: Contemporary Literature – Dr. Long Le-Khac
Literatures of the New U.S. Immigration
How has the new U.S. immigration transformed the immigrant narrative so central to American identity and culture? Because of landmark changes in U.S. immigration law, Cold War conflicts, and global economic restructuring, the nature of immigration has shifted dramatically in the contemporary period. The new U.S. immigration looks very different than the waves that came around the turn of the 20th century. Migrations from Latin America, Asia, and Africa are reshaping the social landscapes of the U.S. How are the literatures emerging from these groups in turn reshaping the literary landscapes of America? What new forms, stories, and concerns are they interjecting as they claim American literature and wrestle with the economic, legal, political, military, and imperial forces that shape their communities? We’ll focus on some of the central texts and debates in the fields of Latinx and Asian American literatures and touch on literature from the new African diaspora. This course will practice methods of relational ethnic studies as we draw out, compare, and link the aesthetic and political challenges Latinx, Asian American, and African diasporic writers are tackling.
ENGL 490: Topics in American Literature – Dr. Suzanne Bost
This seminar will focus on what it means to be human in a time and place where human lives are intertwined with technology, when the byproducts of human creation are destroying plant and animal habitats, and when many human lives continue to be treated as if they were expendable or unlivable. In the last 20-30 years, a variety of posthumanist theories have emerged that rethink common assumptions about the role of the human in our world. Building from the insights of postmodernism, critical studies of science and technology, animal studies, postcolonial studies, environmental studies, disability studies, and feminist new materialisms, posthumanist theorists have challenged anthropocentrism as well as Humanist values like autonomy, rationality, objectivity, and universal equality. This course will begin with an introduction to a variety of these approaches to posthumanism and then turn to works of contemporary literature that push our thinking beyond the limits of the human. In our readings of theoretical works by Cary Wolfe, Karen Barad, Rosi Braditotti, Donna Haraway, Stacy Alaimo, and Claire Colebrook alongside literary works by Justin Torres, William Gibson, Octavia Butler, J.M. Coetzee, Salvador Plascencia, Susanne Antonetta, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs, we will examine the ways in which misogyny, racism, and environmental toxicity demand a rethinking of the status of the human as well as ethical alternatives that emerge from other-than-Humanist traditions. Assignments will include one class presentation, regular response papers, a final conference paper, and a final exam.
ENGL 484: Literature of the Jazz Age – Dr. David Chinitz
A decade of rapid and profound social change, the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s was also extraordinarily conscious of its own modernity. In this course we will examine the changes in culture, both high and low, that marked this period. Our syllabus will be interdisciplinary: we will cross over into music, film, and other genres in order to study the period more comprehensively, and to examine the cross-fertilization and mutual influences among the arts as the age of literary modernism reached its peak. We will read works by such authors as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, T. S. Eliot, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, E. E. Cummings, and F. Scott Fitzgerald as we visit such topics as, for example, the cult of the primitive, the reinvention of the “New Woman,” the Harlem Renaissance, the rise of modern popular culture, and the relationship of jazz to all these phenomena. Work by Jazz-Age and contemporary critics will supplement our primary readings.
ENGL 485: Contemporary Literature – Dr. Long Le-Khac
Literatures of the New U.S. Immigration
How has the new U.S. immigration transformed the immigrant narrative so central to American identity and culture? Because of landmark changes in U.S. immigration law, Cold War conflicts, and global economic restructuring, the nature of immigration has shifted dramatically in the contemporary period. The new U.S. immigration looks very different than the waves that came around the turn of the 20th century. Migrations from Latin America, Asia, and Africa are reshaping the social landscapes of the U.S. How are the literatures emerging from these groups in turn reshaping the literary landscapes of America? What new forms, stories, and concerns are they interjecting as they claim American literature and wrestle with the economic, legal, political, military, and imperial forces that shape their communities? We’ll focus on some of the central texts and debates in the fields of Latinx and Asian American literatures and touch on literature from the new African diaspora. This course will practice methods of relational ethnic studies as we draw out, compare, and link the aesthetic and political challenges Latinx, Asian American, and African diasporic writers are tackling.