The Department of English will be offering two new ICC-affiliated courses in the fall: ENGL 24500 Contemporary American Literature (humanities perspective; identities and mind, body, spirit themes) and ENGL 38900 Poetry Mash-Up: Contemporary Lyric and Poetic Tradition (Diversity and Writing Intensive). All ICC designations are currently pending.
ENGL 24500 Contemporary American Literature
Subtitle: Realism Under Strain
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Hansom, Muller 321
ICC ATTRIBUTES: Themes and Perspectives: Humanities; Identities OR Mind, Body, Spirit (designations pending)
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: None.
STUDENTS: Open to all students.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Modern and contemporary American literature draws its subjects and creative materials from the enormous and bewildering changes that have taken place since the end of World War Two. While the obliteration of Germany and Japan certainly placed America in an unprecedented position, this was by no means a coherent or a comfortable one. Rather, these historic realignments, economic dislocations, constant wars, rapid technological and demographic shifts, worked together to produce an experienced reality that was astonishing, terrifying, and almost beyond belief. Modern and contemporary American literatures embody a tremendous creative energy and force in response to these social and historical dynamics. The sheer range of their forms and the power of their visions, images and metaphors have not only shaped writing, reading, and thinking on an international scale, but have changed the very idea of culture, history, fact, and fiction.
This literature explores ambiguity and disorientation, it blurs boundaries, it breaks inhibition, it frees up concepts of identity, and shatters comforting national images into sharp, often ironic, fragments. This is a powerful literature that reflects, creates, and mediates a radically diversified cultural landscape, giving us an America that is elusive, enigmatic, plural and polyglot.
This class will examine some of the ways in which American writers and artists have both contributed and responded to these seismic shifts, exploring the relationships between multi-cultural perspectives, post-industrial realities, and the increasingly complex connections between mass media and national identity. As the American landscape morphs into the post-modern and the post-post-modern, so does the American literary form, radically re-mapping our conceptions of family, politics, history, gender, race, and even the sacred self.
To help us with our investigations, we will focus on a range of American literatures (including novels, stories, poems and plays) by the likes of Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Don Delillo, Philip Roth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen, Leslie Silko, and Paul Auster. To name just a few.
ENGL 38900 Poetry Mash-Up: Contemporary Lyric and Poetic Tradition
3 credits
INSTRUCTOR: Christine Kitano
ICC ATRIBUTES: Diversity; Writing Intensive (designations pending)
ENROLLMENT: 20 per section
PREREQUISITES: Sophomore standing
STUDENTS: Open to all students.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will read “classics” of 20th century American poetry alongside contemporary poets to examine the various ways of reading and understanding “tradition” in American poetry. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot criticizes the tendency to praise a poet “upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else,” and instead offers that the “best” and most “individual” aspects of a poet’s work will often be those that are most rooted in tradition. So, what makes contemporary poets “original”? How are poets today revising and widening the tradition? Discussion will include issues of canon and power—who decides which poets constitute the tradition? And for poets seen as “outside” the tradition, what aesthetic choices are available to them? How can they assert their voices while working within a tradition that may not hear them? Sample readings include selected poems by Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, H.D., and Langston Hughes, and contemporary collections by Aracelis Girmay, Solmaz Sharif, Gergory Pardlo, Ross Gay, Ada Limon, Tarfia Faizullah, and Victoria Chang.
