ENG 150 – Literature Interprets the World (3 credit hours)

Introduction to ways literary artists shape experience, focusing on one topic or selected topics; primarily discussion; writing intensive. P or C-WRI 110, WRI 111, or exemption therefrom. (D)

The Mutable American

This course will study U.S. literature’s representation of the shape-shifting, identity-swapping, malleable American.  Since the nation’s founding, American identity has sat at the crossroads of radical acceptance and radical exclusion, and the grounds of that intersection has shifted across two centuries, through legal, economic, and cultural change.  American literature, especially written by and about racialized groups, charts that shift.  This course will examine representations of the processes of inclusion and exclusion in writing by Herman Melville, Charles Chesnutt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sandra Cisneros, Philip Roth, and more.  Focusing on key characters and characterizations of identity performance, we will learn about literature—form, structure, style—and we will think about and with literature’s account of American identity. 

Our reading list will include seven authors from the nineteenth through late twentieth centuries.  Students will be required to read all texts, write short reflection pieces, and engage in discussion.   

First Session Course:

• Online – Asynchronous, Franco