Admission requirements
None.
Description
To migrate, Salman Rushdie writes in Imaginary Homelands, is “to lose language and home, to be defined by others, to become invisible, or, even worse, a target; it is to experience deep changes and wrenches in the soul.” However, he adds, “the migrant is not simply transformed by [this] act; he [or she] transforms his new world” (210). In this course we will explore the ways in which first- and second generation immigrant writers as well as writers who are descendants of forced migrants to America testify to the complex transformations migration, diaspora, and exile have brought about and how in the process they have profoundly changed American literature in the past three decades. Complicating the idea of the United States as a self-proclaimed nation of immigrants, the recent immigrant and minority writers we’ll read imagine hybrid or multiple identities and alternative, multicultural and multiethnic, national and transnational communities. We will study literary works by Jewish American, Native American, African American, Chicana and Latino American, and Asian American writers as well as a few movies such as John Sayles’s Lone Star, focusing on the interrelated themes of diaspora and home(land); borders and border-crossings; exile and otherness; language and silence; gender and sexuality; trauma and memory; intercultural and generational conflict and reconciliation; race and ethnicity. We will also read a few theoretical texts about migration, ethnicity, and trauma. We’ll focus on U.S. literature and film, but will also explore the relevance of the insights gained to our own changing and globalizing communities today.
Course objectives
This course aims to
hone students’ analytical and critical skills through in-depth reading of literary texts and films in their historical and cultural contexts.
introduce students to theoretical concepts in migration, ethnic and memory
develop critical understanding of the concept of U.S. exceptionalism
develop students’ skills to conduct independent research
develop students’ oral and written communication skills
develop their ability to apply theoretical and critical insights in a research essay
Timetable
See timetable
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Assessment method
Oral presentation and discussion (30%) and
research essay (c. 4000 words; 70%).
Blackboard
Blackboard will be used ### Reading list
Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers (Persea Books)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (Vintage)
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 3rd ed. (Aunt Lute)
T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain (Penguin)
James Welch, Winter in the Blood (Penguin)
Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water (Bantam)
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Vintage)
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance o Loss (Grove Press)
Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Plume)
John Sayles, dir. Lone Star, DVD
Registration
Via uSis.
Registration Studeren à a carte
Registration Studeren à la carte via: www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/onderwijs/alacarte
Contact
Email: Ms.dr. J.C. Kardux
Remarks
None