SPRING 2001
This information effective for Spring 2001.
Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.
Instructor: Kirsten Silva Gruesz
For further information, please consult instructor's web page: http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~kgruesz/
Instructor: Rob Wilson
E-mail: rwilson@cats.ucsc.edu
Office: Oakes 311
The microstate island that is contemporary Hawai'i does not fit easily into being called a "region of the United States." For complicated historical and cultural reasons we will explore, Hawai'i both is and is not inside the "mainland" United States; and, furthermore, it is not just a trope or figment of the Hollywood imagination [as in the tourist dreamland of "Blue Hawai'i"]. Instead, the literatures of Hawai'i - and there are more than just one, including the US national-canonical literature (Twain, Melville, Jack London et al.) as well as the counter-literatures around Bamboo Ridge Press and other more radical literary journals - can be understood as a site of social struggle and dream-drenched imagining by various authors and social groups.
That is why I say we will study Hawaii's literature not as literary "icons" but as sites (and genres) of social "representation" and struggle, political "contestation" (for example, as in the ongoing Native Hawaiian sovereignty struggle to achieve recovered nationhood status), and all-too-romantic "hallucinations" of multicultural Asian/Pacific/Haole Paradise by a varied cast of explorers, settlers, plantation workers and their offspring, Pac Rim tourists, transnational operators, pidgin-speaking locals, the culturally profound indigenous people, Christian real estate agents, Bamboo Ridge poets, novelists, crazed beachcombers, enchanted ethnographers and so on.
[available at Literary Guillotine/ UCSC Copy Center**]:
**Course Reader containing various essays, stories, chants, polemics, poems, etc. (TBA).
1) For each assigned reading unit per week, instead of keeping a journal entry, each student should post a one to two paragraph "reaction" comment expressing her/his overall comments on the assigned readings (perhaps zooming in on one or two works, and providing not just paraphrase, but critique); it can be in an analytical or a creative mode of expression and should aim to stimulate class discussion, raise questions, and provoke on-line reflection on the shared readings.
[We need to set up a class "e-mail discussion group" to facilitate the distribution and feedback on our various, honest, and even off-the-cuff reactions to the readings and to possible essay topics, etc.. We need to set up an e-mail discussion list at CATS - maybe somebody can serve as "Listmaster," or we can break into two groups?].
2) There will be a midterm (with some identifications, poetry analysis, and brief essays) as well as a final paper. In addition to some in-class writing assignments on the readings, this final paper will consist of a "research" essay, ranging in length at around 12 pages, and in the form of critical analysis with footnotes and bibliography. A range of topics will be announced in advance of the due date: as we discuss possible essay topics, the writing process will be emphasized in class sessions focusing on the making of student essays, from "brainstorming" and "thesis-making" to "revising" of essay drafts.
Instructor: Kirsten Silva Gruesz
For further information, please consult instructor's web page: http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~kgruesz/