LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature

(also offered as CRCL 5931)

Current Offerings

Fall 2007: 
Thursdays, 4-6:50pm 
as
"American Minority Literature"

Summer 2008: 
M, T, Th 3-6pm, 1st 5-wks session
as
"American Immigrant Literature"

* * *
Originally known as "Seminar in American Minority Literature," this seminar is now a generic multicultural literature course offering a variety of topics and emphases.

This webpage applies primarily to the seminar's "Minority Literature" offering. For a preview of summer 2008's graduate seminar in American Immigrant Literature, go to the undergraduate webpage for . . .

LITR 4333: American Immigrant Literature

* * *
"All men are created equal,"
declared the USA’s Founding Fathers,
but who counts as "men?"
And in a nation of many differences,
what is "equal?"

Asking and responding to such questions,
ethnic, gender, and class minorities write
novels, memoirs, and poems
that assert the possibility of
both equality and difference
in an evolving American identity.
*

To enhance class participation, each student will give at least one reading or presentation of a poem from beyond the course readings.

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (opening-class handout; 1776)

Selection from an immigrant novel

The Classic Slave Narratives, ed. H. L. Gates, 1987 (NAL)
(Students will read selections from narratives by Equiano, Douglass, and Jacobs)

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, 1977 (Plume)

African American Poetry for Student Presentations
Jupiter Hammon, "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ . . ."
Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel"
Langston Hughes, "Harlem"; "Dream Variations"
Amiri Baraka, "An Agony. As Now."
Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays"
Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"
Rita Dove, "Poem in Which I Refuse Contemplation"

Native American

John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, 1932 (Bison)

Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine, 1993
(New / Expanded Edition; HarperPerrennial)

Native American Poetry for Student Presentations
Linda Hogan, "November"
Chrystos, "I have not signed a Treaty with the United States Government"
Simon J. Ortiz, “Travels in the South”
Sherman Alexie, "Vision (2)"

Mexican American

Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, 1972 (Warner)

Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek, 1991 (Vintage)

Mexican American Poetry for Student Presentations
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Ancestor"
Jimmy Santiago Baca, "V"
Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Under the Knife"
Lorna Dee Cervantes, "For Virginia Chavez"
Pat Mora, "Depression Days"

Gender as Minority

Women's Poetry for Student Presentations
Sylvia Plath, "Daddy"
Cynthia Macdonald, "The Kilgore Rangerette whose Life was Ruined"
Fabian Worsham, "At the Sheraton in Denton, Texas"
Fabian Worsham, "Morphine Dreams"

John Reid (Andrew Tobias), The Best Little Boy in the World, 1973 (Ballantine)

Gay Poetry for Student Presentations
Walt Whitman, "In Paths Untrodden"
W. H. Auden, "Lullabye"
Frank O'Hara, "My Heart"

Written Assignments and Graded Work
(details follow objectives):

Take-home midterm (7-10 pages; due . . . ; 25%)

Research Proposal (due by email . . . ; ungraded)

Research Project (Essay or journal) (15-20 pages; 50%)

Poetry reading, class & email participation, attendance (25%)

In this disposition of graded assignments, percentages are only approximate and not to be construed mathematically but rather as general indications of relative weight. Only letter grades are given; pluses and minuses may appear on final grades. Grades are primarily assigned according to quality of writing, research, and thought, as judged in comparison with work by other students, present and past. Your writing will be criticized in the interest of helping you become a better writer. Criticism does not distinguish content from presentation.

Course Objectives:
("Objectives" are the ideas and terms developed and reinforced throughout the semester in lectures, discussions, presentations, and examinations. In terms of learning outcomes, this course should enable you to explain these ideas and discuss minority literature in these terms.)

Objective 1
To define the “minority concept" as a power relationship modeled by some ethnic groups’ historical relation to the dominant American culture.

1a. “Involuntary (or forced) participation”
(Unlike the dominant immigrant culture, ethnic minorities did not choose to come to America or join its dominant culture. Thus the original "social contract" of Native Americans and African Americans contrasts with that of European Americans, Asian Americans, or most Latin Americans, and the consequences of "choice" or "no choice" echo down the generations.)

1b.  “Voiceless and choiceless”
(Contrast the dominant culture’s self-determination or choice through self-expression or voice, as in "The Declaration of Independence.")

1c. To observe alternative identities and literary strategies developed by minority cultures and writers to gain voice and choice:

·        “double language” (same words, different meanings to different audiences)

·        using the dominant culture’s words against them

·        conscience to dominant culture (which otherwise forgets the past).

Objective 2
To observe representations and narratives (images and stories) of ethnicity and gender as a means of defining minority categories.

2a. Is the status of women, lesbians, and homosexuals analogous to that of ethnic minorities in terms of voice and choice? Do "women of color" become "double minorities?"

2b. To detect "class" as a repressed subject of American discourse.
·        “You can tell you’re an American if you can’t talk about class.”

·        American culture officially regards itself as "classless."

·        Race and gender may replace class divisions of power, labor, or "place."

·        Class may remain identifiable in signs or markers of power and prestige or their absence.

·        High class status in the USA is often marked by plainness, simplicity, or lack of visibility.

2c. "Quick check" on minority status: What is the individual’s or group’s relation to the law or other dominant institutions? Does "the law" make things better or worse?

Objective 3
To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and privileging the individual—with alternative narratives of American minorities, which involve involuntary participation, connecting to the past, and traditional (extended) or alternative families.

Tabular summary of contrasts between the dominant culture's "American Dream" narrative and minority narratives (still Objective 3)

3a. African American alternative narrative: “The Dream”

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”

3a. African American alternative narrative: “The Dream”
("The Dream" resembles but is not identical to "The American Dream." Whereas the American Dream emphasizes immediate individual success, "the Dream" factors in setbacks, the need to rise again, and a quest for group dignity.)

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"
(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people. Yet they defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," instead choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

3c. Mexican American narrative: “The Ambivalent Minority”
("Ambivalent" means having "mixed feelings" or contradictory attitudes. Mexican Americans may exemplify immigrant culture as individuals or families who come to America for economic gain but suffer social dislocation. On the other hand, much of Mexico's historic experience with the USA resembles the experience of the Native Americans: much of the United States, including Texas, was once Mexico. Does a Mexican who moves from Juarez to El Paso truly immigrate?)

Objective 4

To register the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance—i. e., do you fight or join the culture that oppressed you? What balance do minorities strike between economic benefits and personal or cultural sacrifices?

 4a. To identify the "new American" who crosses, combines, or confuses ethnic or gender identities (e. g., Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Lenny Kravitz, Mariah Carey, K. D. Lang, Dennis Rodman, RuPaul, David Bowie)

 4b. To distinguish the ideology of American racialism—which sees races as pure, separate, and permanent identities—from American practice, which always involves hybridity (or mixing) and change.

 Tabular summary of 4b

Objective 5
To study the influence of minority writers and speakers on literature, literacy, and language.

5a.  To discover the power of poetry and fiction to help "others" hear the minority voice and vicariously share the minority experience.

5b. To assess the status of minority writers in the "canon" of what is read and taught in schools (plus the criteria determining such status).

5c. To regard literacy as the primary code of modern existence and a key or path to empowerment.

5d. To note development and variations of standard English by minority writers and speakers.

5e. To emphasize how all speakers and writers may use common devices of human language to make poetry, including narrative, poetic devices,  and figures of speech.

5f. To generalize the "Dominant-Minority" relation to philosophical or syntactic categories of "Subject & Object," in which the "subject" is self-determining and active in terms of "voice and choice," while the "object" is acted upon, passive, or spoken for rather than acting and speaking.

Objective 6
To observe images of the individual, the family, and alternative families in the writings and experience  of minority groups.

6a. Generally speaking, minority groups place more emphasis on “traditional” or “community” aspects of human society, such as extended families or alternative families, and they mistrust “institutions.” The dominant culture celebrates individuals and nuclear families and identifies more with dominant-cultural institutions or its representatives, like law enforcement officers, teachers, bureaucrats, etc. (Much variation, though.)

6b. To question sacred modern concepts like "individuality" and "rights" and politically correct ideas like minorities as "victims"; to explore emerging postmodern identities, e. g. “biracial,” “global,” and “post-national.”

  Objective 7
To survey minority representations of the USA's “dominant” culture.

 7a. Primary definition: "American Dream" or "Immigrant" culture.

7b. To observe shifting names or identities of the dominant culture in relation to different minority cultures:

(Tabular summary for Objective 7b)

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Contact Craig White at
whitec@uhcl.edu
or
281 283 3380