American Literature - Winter 1998

This course will examine a wide range of Herman Melville's writing, from his earliest novel (TYPEE) to his final novella (BILLY BUDD). In addition to examining the complete texts of TYPEE, WHITE JACKET, MOBY-DICK, PIERRE, THE CONFIDENCE MAN, and BILLY BUDD, we will read a variety of his tales, some selected poetry, and several of his letters, as well as excerpts from several other novels. We'll pay particular attention to placing MOBY-DICK in the context of Melville's other works, and to placing his works as a whole in the times of their time and in the context of other writers. The course will integrate lectures and class discussions.

Students will write two 2-page papers, two 4-page papers, and a final 8-page paper.

American Literature 125B will examine a number of recent American feature films in which graphic depiction of physical violence is an important element. We will study these films in the light of other artistic and symbolic uses of violence, considering their formal, generic, and thematic aspects, as well as their psychological, historical, socio-political, and ideological contexts and implications.

Monday and Wednesday at 11 a.m. in Classroom Unit 1.

Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in Classroom Unit 2. Students in the course are required to see the film at this showing (or be responsible for renting the films themselves.) The films will not be available for private viewing at the Media Center (because the impact of a large class like this can overwhelm the facilities.)

TBA.

• Aristotle's Poetics
• Foucault's Discipline and Punish
• Clover's Men
• Women and Chain Saws
• as well as articles on individual films.

• A Clockwork Orange
• The Wild Bunch
• Badlands
• Raging Bull
• True Romance
• Natural Born Killers
• Fargo
• Man Bites Dog.

attendance and participation at lectures and discussion sections; two short (five-page) essays and one longer (8-10 page) essay on a film not studied in class chosen by the student; final examination (term identification, film clips).

For further information contact Mary-Kay Gamel, x.2381, mkgamel@macmail.

This course is an introductory survey of contemporary Native American literature. Our principal goals include achieving an appreciation of how contemporary Indian writers and poets belong to an older legacy of cultural expressionists seeking to maintain the following:

• an appropriation and transformation of the literary act;
• a continuing reliance on the value of oral tradition;
• the central role of communities and families;
• the persistence of tribal histories and the honoring of traditional world views;
• writing as a form of resistance and renewal.

Velma Wallis, Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival (Harperperennial Library, 1994).

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays : A Tribal Voice (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

Janet Campbell Hale, The Jailing of Cecelia Capture (University of New Mexico Press, 1987).

Janet Campbell Hale, Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter (University of Arizona Press, 1998).

James Welch, Fools Crow (Penguin USA, 1987).

James Welch, Winter in the Blood (Penguin USA, 1992).

N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn (HarperCollins, 1989)

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (Penguin USA, 1988).

Gloria Bird, The River of History : Prose Poems (Trask House Books, 1997).

This course examines contemporary Chicano prose, poetry, and film, emphasizing both the historical contexts informing these works and the emerging visual and electronic media of a future toward which they gesture. Rather than retracing a strictly chronological path in the development of this tradition, we will follow a series of interlinked themes that have concerned Mexican-American writers from 1848 through the Chicano Movement and afterward, from Texas to California and outward. We will pay particular attention to the cultural conditions under which texts are produced, disseminated, and experienced, exploring the work of independent artists through alternative media such as the World Wide Web and performance videos.

A WEB SITE FOR THIS COURSE WILL BE OPERATIVE SOMETIME DURING DECEMBER; PLEASE CHECK BACK FOR IT.

Valdez, Luis, "The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa," in Necessary Theater: Six Plays about the Chicano Experience, ed. Jorge Huerta

Rebolledo & Rivera, eds. Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature (short stories and poetry)

Luis Alberto Urrea, By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border (essays, novella)

José Antonio Burciaga, Spilling the Beans (essays)

Richard Rodríguez, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (autobiographical essays)

Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus (novel)

Dagoberto Gilb, The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña (novel)

Ron Arias, The Road to Tamazunchale (novel)

Arturo Islas, La Mollie and the King of Tears (novel)

includes poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Luis Rodriguez, Luis Alfaro, Gil Cuadros, Alurista, and José Montoya, as well as some historical/ critical essays.

Border Brujo (Gómez-Peña)

Mi Vida Loca (Anders)

And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him (Pérez)

The X-Files (Chupacabras episode)

a. Four informal journal entries, covering defined issues about Chicano language and expression, including work on the Internet.

b. Two short (5 p.) formal essays, either or both of which may be revisions of journal entries.

c. Required midterm.

d. Final evaluation may be taken either as an end-of-term exam or a longer term paper (with permission of the instructor or section leader).

PLEASE NOTE: A WEB PAGE WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THIS COURSE SOMETIME IN DECEMBER; PLEASE CHECK THE SYLLABUS CLEARINGHOUSE PAGE AT CATS/INSTRUCTIONAL COMPUTING.

Rather than attempt to survey the whole of contemporary American writing, this seminar will investigate the fate of genre-- the most venerable philosophical category in literary theory-- in the wake of postmodernism's claim to have done away with the boundaries it enforces. We will read influential works that subvert, problematize, or re- invent the old Aristotelian hierarchies of genre: novels that look like dramas, commentaries disguised as lyric, cartoons that wear the mask of tragedy. Postmodern writers have invigorated traditional literary forms by borrowing stylistic cues from formerly lowly subgenres such as crime fiction, romance, and the Western, as well as film and the mass media. In blurring the distinctions between "high" and "popular" culture, some theorists claim, such texts undermine the class structure to which these boundaries correspond. Yet at the same time, mass-market fiction, television, pop music, Hollywood films, and other products of what Theodor Adorno called "the culture industry" are bound to rules of generic convention as strict as anything court poets of the Renaissance could have devised. In this context, genre has become a means to convert cultural artifacts into easily recognizable, marketable commodities: a way to organize readers as consumers.

Our overview of contemporary writing, then, will revolve around the following set of questions: How do we reconcile the apparent death of genre in "serious" writing with its ongoing vitality in the sphere of popular culture? What social pressures account for the waxing and waning a particular genre's influence and dominance? How might genre theory illuminate the phenomenology of literary experience-- the process by which readerly expectations are created and manipulated? Finally, what does it mean to "read" a text in a world that has become predominantly aural and visual-- and increasingly oriented toward the non-vertical pathways through which electronic information flows?

The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry, ed. Robert Alexander

Bernadette Mayer, Proper Name and Other Stories

Rolando Hinojosa, The Valley

Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey

Art Spiegelman, Maus

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Louis Edwards, N: A Romantic Mystery

+ a course reader of critical/theoretical materials

• mandatory attendance/participation
• biweekly short assignments: some structured, some asking for detailed responses to the texts, some asking you to do additional critical reading
• a term-long project on a literary genre of your choice, either mass-cultural or high-cultural, describing its evolution and analyzing some samples of it. We'll start working on this during the 3d week; it will go through revision and presentation stages before the final paper (15 pp.) is due at the end.

Revised 7/12/04.