ENGL 6385-01:  Seminar in Special Topics, Prof. Alison Umminger  
American Literature at Mid-Century:  Race and Sexuality at a Crossroads
M 5:30PM-8:00PM, TLC 1204

Description:  This seminar will look at one of the more nebulous times in American literary history, the 1940s and 1950s, a time when race and gender roles underwent revolutionary transformations in America and in American literature.  These texts point to rapidly changing ideas about race, gender, and sexuality.  While we will also look at the movement from modern to postmodern in the literary (and cultural) landscape, and while acknowledging the “beats,” we will search for other ways to define this transitional moment in American literary history.

Texts:  Lilian Smith:  Killers of the Dream.  Frantz Fanon:  Black Skin, White Masks.  Carson McCullers:  A Clock Without Hands.  Jack Kerouac:  On the Road.  James Baldwin:  Giovanni’s Room.  Gwendolyn Brooks:  Collected Poems.  Ralph Ellison:  Invisible Man.  Chester Himes:  If He Hollers, Let Him Go.  William Faulkner:  A Light in August. Zora Neale Hurston: Seraph on the Suwanne.  Flannery O’Connor:  A Good Man is Hard to Find.  Tennessee Williams:  A Streetcar Named Desire.  Selected critical readings.

Departmental Learning Outcomes:
* Students will engage in serious independent reading and research on a literary, writing, or theory topic.
* Students will participate in seminar discussion and present their own research and reading to the class.
* Students will refine their skills in literary analysis and/or specific critical approaches.
* Students will appreciate the cultural, social, historical, and economic influences that contribute to the creation of literary artifacts.
* Students will recognize the implications and applications of the ideas and methods of the seminar and will reveal their understanding by demonstrating both oral and written facility in applying the seminar material to the critical analysis of literary and cultural texts
* Students will be capable of conducting independent and meaningful course-related research and synthesizing it in the form of a correctly documented research paper prepared according to current professional standards.

Graduate Program Goals:
* This course prepares students to complete successfully the comprehensive oral examination that is required for all M.A. degree candidates.
* This course provides students with literary, historical, and critical contexts related to texts on the department's required reading list.
* Oral presentations in the course strengthen students' presentation skills and prepare them further for the oral comprehensive examination which is required for the M.A. degree.
* Gaining further knowledge of texts in this area strengthens students' content area knowledge, prepares them for taking nationally recognized standardized examinations (such as the advanced GRE subject examination in English), and further prepares them for careers in teaching, writing, and business or advanced graduate-level study.

Requirements:
Research Paper (50%):
Students will complete a 15-18 page research paper on a topic of their own devising related to the course material. Papers will be preceded by a two-page prospectus that will outline the primary text or pair of texts and major secondary sources the student plans to use and set out the tentative argument of the essay as a whole. Complete papers will follow current MLA guidelines. Approach this paper as a preliminary version of an academic article, your entry into the conversation represented by the secondary works on this seminar syllabus. The prospectus will be due three weeks before the completed paper. As a preliminary exercise, it will not be graded, but I will offer commentary on your proposed topic and suggestions for further research; failure to turn in a prospectus on time will have an effect on your grade for the completed essay. Final papers will be assessed on the depth of your argument, your use of research materials and the quality of your writing.

Seminar Participation (20%):
In a graduate seminar, active participation in discussions is of great importance. Students should have read both the primary and secondary texts before class meetings and must attend regularly; more than two absences will have a negative impact on your final grade. Most importantly, students are expected to contribute constructively to the conversation about the texts by asking questions and responding to ideas presented by both the instructor and other seminar participants.

Weekly Responses (15%):
By Sunday at 5:00 p.m., I’d like for each of you to submit a paragraph long “talking point” to an e-mail list of the rest of the class.  This should include some open-ended observations and/or questions which I will use in structuring the class for Monday evening.  Be prepared to discuss the issues you have raised, as I may use these to encourage class participation.

Oral Presentation (15%):
Each student will sign up to give a fifteen-minute oral report presenting your own analytical perspective on a specific aspect of the week’s primary reading. The presentation should consist of your own reading of the primary text, drawing upon ideas from assigned or independently researched secondary material to support and elaborate your perspective. Your presentation should not summarize the secondary material or the primary text but should instead argue and support an analytical thesis. Students should meet with me in the week preceding your presentation both so that I can answer any questions you have about your topic and so that I can plan my own presentation around what you have to say. Presentations should be accompanied by a handout outlining your talk’s major points and sources. Please time your presentation before you arrive in class, as I will have to intervene in presentations that run too long.

August 22^nd –  Intro to class -- Discussion of periodization

                        In Class Reading:  “Black Writing, White Reading:  Race and the Politics

                                    of Feminist Interpretation” by Elizabeth Abel.

August 29^th –  If He Hollers Let Him Go

                        “The Other Side of the Street” by James Naremore

September 5^th – NO CLASS

September 12^th – Invisible Man

                           “’To Become One and Yet Many’:  Psychic Fragmentation and

            Aesthetic Synthesis in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” by Philip Brian Harper

September 19^th –  Killers of the Dream

                        Introduction from White Women, Race Matters by Ruth Frankenberg

September 26^th –  A Streetcar Named Desire

                        Excerpt from Richard Dyer’s “White”

October 3^rd –  Clock Without Hands

                        “’A Mixture of Delicious and Freak’:  The Queer Fiction of Carson

                        McCullers” by Rachel Adams

October 10^th –  Giovanni’s Room

                        Excerpt from “Queer Theory” by AnnaMaria Jagose

October 17^th –  Black Skin, White Masks

“Interior Colonies:  Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification” by

Diane Fuss

October 24^th –  A Light in August

                        “Optic White:  Blackness and the Production of Whiteness” by

                        Harryette Mullen

October 31^st –  Seraph on the Sewanee

                        “Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” by bell hooks

November 7^th –  A Good Man is Hard to Find

                        Intro to Dirt and Desire by Patricia Yeager

November 14^th –  ABSTRACTS FOR FINAL PAPERS DUE

November 21^st –  On The Road

                        “The Melting Pot that Boiled Over:  Racial Fetishism and the Lingua

                        Franca of Jack Kerouac’s fiction” by Brendon Nicholls

November 28^th –  Collected Poems

                        “Gwendolyn Brooks and the Vicissitudes of Black Female Subjectivity”

                        by Phillip Brian Harper

December 5^th –  Workshopping of Final Papers in Class

December 12^th –  FINAL PAPERS DUE