If President Barack Obama failed to fully achieve our “hope” for a post-racial future, President Donald Trump’s “blame on both sides” dog-whistling has revealed the dangers of this color-blindness. Since the Black Power movement declined in the 1980s, the United States has been living in what Michelle Alexander calls an "Age of Colorblindness." Passage of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988 marked a major event in our own unique history of racial colorblindness. In this course, we will collect, compare, and analyze examples of North American visual culture across this thirty-year history to ask: What does racial representation look like in an era that claimed to be “color blind”? What forms of media have driven or expressed these post-racial desires and erasures? What kinds of analytical postures and methodologies enable us to see, as Christina Sharpe writes, “in excess of what is caught in the frame”? Primary sources will include translated excerpts of Pierre Vallières’s Nègres blancs d’Amérique; speeches by Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau denying Canada’s history of colonialism; advertisements from Nancy Reagan's “Just Say No” campaign; James Cameron's film Avatar (2009); music videos by Michael Jackson, Eminem, and Childish Gambino; art by Shepard Fairy, Kehinde Wiley, Mike Kelley, Adrian Piper, and Parker Bright, along with other textual and visual media. Secondary sources will include theory and history from Rinaldo Walcott, Christina Sharpe, Fred Moten, Mary Dudziak, and Elizabeth Povinelli, among others.
- Teacher: Katherine Thorsteinson
The text of Dracula has, as it were, been “eaten alive” by the culture machine. Since Bram Stoker wrote the novel in 1897, the infamous character “Dracula” has returned repeatedly in novels, short stories, films, television shows, art, music, fashion, new-age religions, and even forms of body-modification. Dracula truly is an un-dead figure of literary allusion. But the story of Dracula does not begin with Stoker’s eponymous novel either. Indeed, his roots trace back to ancient vampire-lore— particularly from Eastern European mythology (variants known as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania) but also from similar mythologies emerging in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. As such, Dracula provides a useful lens for considering various dimensions of the research process: questions of citation, summary, and adaptation as well as of genre, form, and audience. Bridging the 19th and 20th centuries, the gothic and the modern, superstition and science, Dracula also offers us grounds for thinking with and against the notions underlying our research methods: notions such as “history,” “meaning,” and “truth.” Indeed, the novel’s very form— episodic epistolary— demands that we readers take a critical archival approach. Stoker sets us the task, that is, of piecing together the mysteries of the story as well as of interrogating the reliability of his characters. To add to our archival task, I have assigned the “new annotated” version of this novel, edited by Leslie S. Klinger. These annotations will provide context, interpretation, and correction to the novel. Let us, then, enliven the rather deadening experience of research this semester by taking on Dracula and the popular culture of vampirism!
- Teacher: Katherine Thorsteinson
The course offers students the time and focus necessary to take on in-depth studies of a few substantial English-language modernist works. These works include some of the “difficult” but influential texts of the 20th century, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, H.D.’s Trilogy, and T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. In addition, the course will introduce students to discussions about scholarly editions of texts. (Post-1800.)
- Teacher: Matte Robinson
This is an introduction to the study of English Literature.
- Teacher: Ella Jean Allen
An introduction to literatures in English including, but not restricted to, the British literary canon. It teaches students to read and write effectively, and to locate texts in history and culture. The course includes a chronological introduction sensitive to the structures and intersections of literary periods.
This section is particularly concerned with the question "What does it mean to be human?" Our particular focus will include stories about monsters, shapeshifters, and heroes; we will also pay attention to stories of foundation and ambition.
- Teacher: Andrea Schutz
An introduction to literatures in English including, but not restricted to, the British literary canon. It teaches students to read and write effectively, and to locate texts in history and culture. The course includes a chronological introduction sensitive to the structures and intersections of literary periods
- Teacher: Matte Robinson
- Teacher: Andrea Schutz
An introduction to the major examples of Medieval English Drama: Liturgical drama, Cycle drama, Morality plays, and secular drama. We also study Medieval stagecraft, and perform selections from cycle dramas. (Pre-1800.)
- Teacher: Andrea Schutz