English 238 - Spring, 2011

Special Topics in Literary Theory

Class Information

Instructor: Jerng, Mark
CRN: 32577
Time: T 12:10-3:00
Location: 248 Voorhies
Breadth: Later American
Focus: ID, Method, Theory

Description

Topic: Theorizing Race

The end of structures of formal inequality such as Jim Crow and apartheid has left the significance and study of race in crisis. Various pronouncements have been made on the one hand “against” race: the world is beyond race; race no longer exists; race has been superseded by more significant questions of difference; we use race to avoid issues like poverty. Others argue for the continuing realities of race. Both of these positions use the notion of the social construction of race to argue for its obsolescence or its continuing reconstruction. But what the idea of social construction fails to explain is, as Howard Winant puts it, the “persistence and depth of racial categorization and racialized perception of self and society.” In other words, why does race persist in playing such a crucial role in how we imagine ourselves and others? This course moves through various methodological approaches for analyzing the changing landscape and ‘visibility’ of race, taking up various prose fiction written by Frank Norris, Sui Sin Far, William Faulkner, Chang-rae Lee, Toni Morrison, and Samuel Delany along the way. Particular attention will be paid to racial formation, structures of being and perception (phenomenology and psychoanalysis), racial discourse, and theories of virtuality.

Grading

Class Participation
Oral Presentation
15-20 page article-length paper

Texts

selected stories, Frank Norris
selected stories and essays, Sui Sin Far
Light in August, William Faulkner
Einstein Intersection, Samuel Delany
Aloft, Chang-rae Lee
A Mercy, Toni Morrison