ENGL 6120: After the Civil War: American Fiction in Black and White
Dr. Joshua Masters, TLC 2240
Phone: 678-839-4862
Email: jmasters@westga.edu
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 3:00-4:30; Wednesday, 9:30-12:30 & 1-5
Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality. It exists only in the darkness of our minds.
--James Baldwin, Notes of a Native son (1955)
Description
After the Civil War ended, the battle to define, represent, and deconstruct the idea of “race” in the American imagination had only just begun. This course will work with pairings of texts by Anglo and African American writers that explore the myths, themes, and political controversies shaping the development of racial identity in the United States. As we survey such literary movements as Realism, Modernism, and Post-modernism, we will pay attention to the way that new literary forms and movements responded to dramatic social and historical events and shifting cultural attitudes about race, particularly our attitudes towards the categories of “whiteness” and “blackness.” We will also consider the role of American fiction in shaping those attitudes. The works we will read demonstrate a wide a range of perspectives and narrative techniques, and each suggests new ways to imagine the status of the individual, the boundaries of nationhood, and the meaning of such categories as race, ethnicity, class, and gender in America. While examining the works’ shared interests in history, identity, and human agency, we will also bear in mind the unique nature of the individual writers and their texts.
Required Texts (in order of appearance)
Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark (1993)
Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno(1855)
Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories (1960)
Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (1893)
Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage(1990)
Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy (1893)
James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)
Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929)
William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1950)
Percival Everett’s Erasure (2002)
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977)
Russell Banks’s Continental Drift (1986)
Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1999)
Russell Banks’s Rule of the Bone (1993)
Requirements
Preparation for, and active participation in, weekly discussions; 15-20 minute oral presentation; four short essays; a fifteen to twenty page research paper.
Attendance: As this is a graduate class, it should go without saying that attendance and active participation are expected. Generally, one doesn’t miss grad classes. If for some reason you must miss class, make sure you contact me and stay on top of any work you miss. If you miss more than two classes, you should not expect a grade above a C unless your reasons are extremely compelling; you will need to meet with me to discuss your position in the class. However, this won’t happen.
Preparation: I’m looking at the stack of books on my desk for this class, and I’m thinking, “Gosh, that’s a lot of books.” And it is. And I expect you to read every word contained in each one of them, no exceptions (except for Flannery O’Connor, since there’s always an exception; oh, and “Bartleby the Scrivner,” since there are generally more than one exception). You will have between 300 and 400 pages of reading a week consisting of a novel (in Week 6 you will read two novels), an O’Connor short story, and a critical essay or an excerpt from a larger work of criticism. Please bring a copy of the assigned critical text and the assigned works of literature to each class.
Classroom Etiquette: No hair pulling, knuckle cracking (okay, just a little), boisterous eating, slurping, or teeth grinding in the seminar room. Also, no lateness or electronic disturbances.
Short Papers: Over the course of the semester, each student will write four thesis-driven short essays of approximately two pages. These essays will focus on one of the works of literature (rather than the criticism) due that week, and they should present an original, focused thesis on a clearly defined topic or issue relevant to the class. Your grade will be determined by the complexity of your central argument, the structure of your paragraphs, the logic of your organization, and the strength of your prose. You will be encouraged to rewrite, revise, and resubmit two of them. These essays must be submitted to me by email no later than 10 a.m. the day of class, as I may use them to help structure our discussion.
Research Paper: A 15-20 page critical essay on a topic you will devise. You will submit a two-page prospectus beforehand. I will provide more detailed guidelines a little later in the semester.
Oral Presentation: Over the course of the semester, each of you will give an oral presentation based on a “cultural artifact” of your own devising. Each of our literary texts is richly grounded in America’s cultural and material history: they contain references to song lyrics, folk tales, historical events, political figures, legal statutes, law cases, scientific discoveries, broad social movements, and, of course, other works of literature. One of our tasks as readers is to search out some of these references in order to understand the texts’ social and historical contexts and to flesh out our sense of the characters’ and/or the writers' experiences.
At the beginning of the semester, you will sign up for the book on which you would like to do original research. Your research, however, won’t be based on what other critics have said about your book; instead, it will be archival—rooted in cultural and historical connections that you discover. Your goal is to pursue a tangible cultural artifact which you feel is directly relevant to our understanding of the book. It might be a photograph, painting, physical object, movie clip, piece of music, historical document, legal decision, excerpt from another work of literature—or it might be something else altogether; part of the point is to allow you considerable freedom in choosing your subject. One thing you will discover is that this sort of research can lead in unexpected directions, so give yourself time to follow the various threads wherever they lead. We should have access to fairly good technology in TLC 2237 to aid you with your presentation.
As for the presentation itself, plan to speak for 15-20 minutes. You should begin by introducing us to the artifact itself: this can be in the form of a handout, a physical object, a film clip, or an interpretive dance. Your goal will be to illuminate for the class some aspect of the text’s context that will enrich our understanding of the time period and culture that influenced the text’s production. After this brief introduction, plan to read a 5-7 page paper to the class. Devise a central argument or thesis that explains, specifically, how your artifact and research can enhance and enlarge our understanding of the primary text. If you have any questions about the suitability of a topic you have in mind, or if you have trouble coming up with a topic, please come talk to me.
Schedule of Events
Week 1 (8/16)
Introduction, Syllabus, Sign-up for Presentations, Discussion of “Girl” and “Popular Mechanics.”
Week 2 (8/23)
Novel: Melville’s Benito Cereno
Flannery O’Connor Story: “The Artificial Nigger”
Critical Work: Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark; Scott Bradfield, “Why I Hate Toni Morrison’s Beloved”
Group A: 1st response
Week 3 (8/30)
Novel: Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (Oral Presentation by Dr. Masters)
Flannery O’Connor Story: “The Displaced Person”
Critical Work: Excerpt from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, “The Panopticon”
Group B: 1st response
Week 4 (9/6)
Novel: Johnson’s Middle Passage (Oral Presentation by Ben Brown)
Flannery O’Connor Story: “Good Country People”
Critical Work: Introduction and Chapter 14 of Black Imagination and the Middle Passage.
Group C: 1st response
Week 5 (9/13)
Novel: Harper’s Iola Leroy (Oral Presentation by Amelia Lewis)
Flannery O’Connor Story: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Critical Work: Mary Mitchell’s essay, "Rosebloom and Pure White.”
Group A: 2nd response
Week 6 (9/20)
Novels: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Passing (Oral Presentation by Christina Tidabeck and Misty Williams)
Flannery O’Connor Story: “Everything That Rises Must Converge”
Critical Work:
Group B: 2nd response
Week 7 (9/27)
Novel: Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (Oral Presentation by Jade Kierbow)
Critical Work: Group C: 2nd response
Week 8 (10/4)
Novel: Ellison’s Invisible Man, Chapters 1-12 (to p. 260) (Oral Presentation by Kristin Rabun)
Critical Work: Introduction and Chapter 1 of Eric Lott’s Love and Theft. Revisit Foucault’s Panopticon.
Group A: 3rd response
(Last day to withdraw with a W)
Week 9 (10/11)
Novel: Invisible Man, Part II (Oral Presentation by Amy Ellison)
Critical Work: Henry Louis Gates, “The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g).”
Group B: 3rd response
Week 10 (10/18)
Novel: Everett’s Erasure (Oral Presentation by Diana Sullivan)
Critical Work: Michael Hardin’s article, “Postmodernism's Desire for Simulated Death.”
Group C: 3rd response
Week 11 (10/25)
Novel: Morrison’s Song of Solomon (Oral Presentation by Candy Marsh)
Critical Work: Introduction to Houston Baker’s Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature.
Group A: 4th response
Week 12 (11/1)
Novel: Banks’s Rule of the Bone
Critical Work: Salon Interview with Russell Banks
Group B: 4th response
Week 13 (11/8)
Novel: Morrison’s Paradise (Oral Presentation by Paul Shelton)
Critical Work: TBA
Group C: 4th response
Research Paper Prospectus Must Be Emailed to Me by Friday, 5 p.m.
Week 14 (11/15)
O'Connor Day! “Revelation” “Parker’s Back” "A View of the Woods" "The Lame Shall Enter First" and more.
Critical Work: None
Week 15 (11/22)
Thanksgiving Break!
Week 16 (11/29)
Research Presentations
Electronic Reserves
Go to Ingram under UWG’s main page.
Under “Find Information,” click “Course Reserves.”
On the next page, click “Electronic reserves.”
Search by “Course Number.” In the box, type in 6120.
On the next screen, click our course number.
Then, select the document you want to view.
Our Password is “Benito”