ENG 231-01 - American Literary Traditions III

4 credits (Fall and Spring)

At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the closing of the American frontier – which was, implicitly, also a declaration of victory over the indigenous peoples who populated the West. He painted a picture of America and Americans as defined by a frontier that had disappeared. What would come to define America now? With Turner’s declaration as the starting point, this course provides an introduction to American literature from 1893 to the present. We will consider major literary movements, including realism, naturalism, modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, postmodernism, and the rise of ethnic literatures. Throughout, we will situate American literature in the world, exploring transnational currents that trouble the contours of a coherent and enclosed “America.” What is American naturalism’s relationship to European writing? How does William Faulkner’s vision of a doomed white patriarchal American South depend on the Haitian Revolution? How do writers of the Harlem Renaissance differently call forth “Africa”? What happens when we read Lolita as a story about a Russian ex-pat indulging in Americana? We will close with Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which will allow us to explore the relationship between literature and race in America in 2015.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Sinykin