SOCIETY AND LITERATURE (ENG131)
"Things, Things, Things": Literary Consumerism in a Global Context from the Gilded Age to the Present
This course examines the relationship between society and literature, looking specifically at humans’ relationships to material culture and global economic systems of power. Through readings of novels, short stories, essays, and films from the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia, we will address literature’s capacity to endorse, naturalize, dramatize, critique, subvert, or reimagine our relationship to the material objects that occupy our world and to the transnational economic systems of power that shape societies. By placing literature from around the world in comparative perspective, we will ask questions such as: where do the things we own come from? What are the political implications of our relationship to material objects? What role do global configurations of power play in societies’ access to goods, whether staples or luxury commodities? What function does literature serve in mediating our relationship to things? How do the stakes of consumerism and possession vary depending on the class, race, nationality, and gender of the consumer? How do practices of consumption shift during times of conflict? In our reading and writing assignments, we will study the ways writers explore societal issues including but not limited to: consumerism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, trade, globalization, commodities, gifts, debt, conspicuous consumption, aesthetic taste, collecting, hoarding, theft, cultural appropriation, assimilation, inheritance, fetishization, and desire. By the end of this course, you should be able to think more critically about the material objects in your own life, the objects authors represent in literature, the larger economic forces at work in societies, and the various ways that literature makes sense of our place in the material world. Readings include Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton (1897); Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928); Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Weep Not, Child (1964); Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (1999); Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009); and Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance.
TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMIES OF U.S. LITERATURE
Cotton, Wheat, Gold, and Fur in the Making of American Culture
Between 1865 and 1898, U.S. exports nearly quadrupled. Exponential economic growth following the Civil War facilitated efforts to expand the U.S. commercial power across the globe—efforts also made possible by the United States’ advantageous natural resources. How did writers register these dramatic economic changes in their fiction? This interdisciplinary course will examine the ways that late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American novels represent some of the United States’ most important commodities: cotton, wheat, gold, and fur. Beginning with cotton, a U.S. export with a notorious and troubled history, we will use these commodities as entry points into larger questions about capitalism, imperialism, and expansionism. Drawing connections between disparate texts through their common interest in these goods, we will consider the strategies writers employ to grapple with the consequences of commercial expansion and globalization. In doing so, we will practice methodologies for thinking about U.S. fiction in a global context, including transatlantic, transnational, postcolonial, inter-imperial, and hemispheric approaches. We will aim to identify the range of attitudes nineteenth-century writers expressed toward U.S. economic imperialism, and investigate their varied formal strategies for representing the material world. By the end of this course, you should have a fuller knowledge of nineteenth-century economic history in U.S. fiction, practiced methods for expanding the geographic frame of literary analysis, and gained curiosity about the histories of objects you encounter in your daily life. Readings include W. E. B. Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911); Constance Fenimore Woolson, Anne (1882); María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872); Mark Twain, Roughing It (1872); Frank Norris, The Pit (1903); and Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918).
While popular opinion associates the height of U.S. empire with the Spanish-American War, American Studies scholars have demonstrated that U.S. imperialism can be traced to the beginnings of the country, and infiltrated nearly every aspect of American life. This course will focus on nineteenth-century cultural responses to U.S. empire, drawing on interdisciplinary methods to trace the global ties forged by American territorial and commercial expansion. The novels we will read express a range of responses to U.S. imperial efforts—from critiques of colonialism, to anxious constructions of racial hierarchies, to absurd satires of American conquest. As we will see, the United States’ efforts to establish itself as a world power became visible in intimate relationships, overseas travel, artistic practices, domestic spaces, economic ventures, and urban centers of migration throughout the nineteenth century. By drawing attention to the many different manifestations of U.S. imperial ambition, this course will invite you to question the ways that American identity is constructed, and to examine how nineteenth-century discourses continue to shape today’s culture. Readings include Lydia Maria Child, Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians (1824); Herman Melville, Typee (1846); Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Story of Avis (1877); William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885); Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889); Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1903); and Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912).
COLLEGE WRITING (ENGLWRIT112)
This first-year writing course investigates writing as a social act that always occurs within a particular context. We will analyze the choices available to writers in those contexts. The goal of this course is to help you grow as a college writer—not only for academic assignments, but also for the writing demands in your personal, professional, and civic lives. More specifically, we’ll work together to improve your ability to:
Write for a variety of purposes, audiences, and contexts
Identify (and even play with) audience expectations and textual conventions
Use the writing process, especially drafting, peer review, and revision, to re-see and extend your thinking—thus writing essays in which your thinking evolves rather than essays that defend pre-formed positions
Develop your ideas through critical thinking, including analysis and synthesis
Effectively and critically find, use, and cite diverse sources of information
Copy-edit at every level (sentence, paragraph, essay) by considering conventional usage alongside your purpose
Develop effective writing processes and strategies to apply beyond the course
COMPOSITION I: WRITING ABOUT WRITING
The fundamental assumption of this course is that by learning how writing works--through readings of current research by scholars of rhetoric and composition--you will be empowered with the tools to make more successful choices in your own writing.
In a course full of students with disparate interests and backgrounds, perhaps the one thing we all have in common is the act of writing. Whether through emailing, texting, creating a grocery list, completing a homework assignment, or drafting a journal article, writing is something we all do every day. Rarely, however, do we take the time to examine how exactly writing works, and why we make the choices we do as writers. That’s what we’ll be doing in this class. We will be reading and contributing to an ongoing scholarly conversation about writing itself—how readers and writers construct meaning, how writing is shaped by the specific context in which it is written, how writing processes can provide insights into written products, and how authority and identity is negotiated through language. Readings include research articles that explore the concepts of rhetorical situation, effective writing and reading processes, discourse communities, and academic literacies.