Crossing the Color Line: Racial Passing in American Literature
AMST 279
Spring 2021 not offered
|
Narratives of racial passing have long captivated readers and critics alike for the way in which they provocatively raise questions about the construction, reinforcement, and subversion of racial categories. This course will consider several examples of the "literature of passing" as it has been established as a category within African American literature alongside more ambiguously classified 20th-century narratives of ethnic masquerade and cultural assimilation as a way of exploring how literary and filmic texts invoke, interrogate, and otherwise explore categories of race, gender, class, and sexual identity. |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA AMST |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: (AMST) |
Major Readings:
Key texts will include James Weldon Johnson's THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, Nella Larsen's PASSING, Douglas Sirk's film IMITATION OF LIFE, Richard Rodriguez's memoir HUNGER OF MEMORY, Chang-rae Lee's novel A GESTURE LIFE, and Philip Roth's novel THE HUMAN STAIN.
|
Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly responses, two shorter and one longer paper. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course satisfies the Literatures of Difference requirement and helps fulfill the Race and Ethnicity concentration in the English major. Can be taken as a research option to fulfill requirement for the English major honors thesis. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
|
|