Caribbean Poetry and Cinema: "Fields of Islands" in an Open Sea
ENGL 274
Spring 2019
| Section:
01
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| Certificates: Civic Engagement |
In this course, we will consider poetry and cinema that make radical images, sounds, and shapes of the Caribbean as a "field of islands"--islands that presume other islands, islands of foraging, convening, gathering, and concentrating on the small, in the words of Édouard Glissant--in an open, relational sea.
We will trace how the Enlightenment installs itself in the longstanding colonial tropes that render the Caribbean as a space outside of time, outside of history, perpetually under the sun, and, were it not for machetes, filled with redundantly bursting vegetation. This course will present an array of 20th-21st century Caribbean poetics and cinemas that deviate from, challenge, escape, and mangle these tropes and their spatio-temporal unimaginativeness. And we will investigate the ways that these texts and forms make use of the figures of sea, plantation, slavery, indigeneities, uprising, marronage, desire, revolution, apocalypse, vengeance, and imagination. Concerns of nationalism, development, humanism, capitalism, and subjectivity will manifest. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL)(ENGL-Literature) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 50% - 74% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
The final list of writers could include: Michelle Cliff, Michael Smith, Nadia Ellis, Kwame Dawes, Julia de Burgos, Raquel Salas Rivera, St. John Perse, José Lezama Lima, Nancy Morejón, Juana María Rodríguez, Reina María Rodriguez, René Depestre, CLR James, Kamau Braithwaite, Jamaica Kincaid, Junot Díaz, Dixa Ramírez, Derek Walcott, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, among others. Music and lyrics by Buscabulla, Los Wálters, Macha Colón y los Okapí, Cardi B, Bad Bunny, Alegría Rampante, Superaquellos, among others, may sound. Poetics and cinema theory, Columbus¿ diaries, and Kant, et al., will be in the mix.
The final list of films could include: Memories of Underdevelopment, La Carreta, The Harder They Come, Maluala, Rue case-négres/Sugar Cane Alley, Sucre Amer, Suite Habana, Biguine, Heading South, Jean Gentil, Cocote, and short, experimental films of Santiago Alvarez, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Sara Gómez, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.
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Examinations and Assignments:
2-3 short essays, a research essay, and a creative/performance-based project. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course fulfills the Literatures of Difference and Theory requirements and contributes to the American Literature, Race & Ethnicity, and Theory & Literary Forms concentrations of the English major. This course can be used as a Research Option for students pursuing Honors in English. |
| Instructor(s): Ellis Neyra,Ren Times: ..T.R.. 01:20PM-02:40PM; Location: DWNY113; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 25 | | SR major: 5 | JR major: 10 | | |
| Seats Available: -3 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 6 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 7 | 1st Ranked: 3 | 2nd Ranked: 1 | 3rd Ranked: 1 | 4th Ranked: 1 | Unranked: 1 |
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