English 10C-4 - Spring, 2014

Literatures in English III: 1900-Present

Class Information

Instructor: Lewandowski, Angela
CRN: 42875
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 227 Olson

Description

English 10C is the third course in the required three-part Literatures in English sequence for majors. In this class, we will read prose, poetry, and drama written in English from 1900 to present. More specifically, we will investigate literature’s relationship to the movement and mobility of individuals and of populations that has been a defining historical condition of the last century.

With the invention of the internal combustion engine and exploitation of fossil fuels came a century of mass automobility, especially for people living in the United States. With shifting borders, decolonization, and rapidly changing political and economic conditions around the world came the movement of entire populations. Ecological disasters like the Dust Bowl, the devastation of the Korean peninsula, and Hurricane Katrina displaced large numbers of people, forcing migrations. Today, we face the prospect of even greater population shifts and forced migrations as the changing climate begins to render entire continents less habitable. How does literature register what it has meant and what it means today to be deracinated, displaced, out of place, removed, on the move, on the go, on the road? Such questions as these will frame our thinking.

In your assignments, you will discuss the formal and thematic elements of texts; refine your ability to employ the terms of literary criticism; develop original theses; and make use of research and theory to help build compelling arguments. During class discussion, you will practice talking about how texts produce effects and meaning for you. Furthermore, you will gain awareness of and improve your own writing process, ultimately developing as both an oral and written communicator.

Grading

Participation: 10%
Quizzes: 10%
Group Presentation: 15%
Close Reading Essay: 25%
Critical Essay: 30%
Final Exam: 10%

Texts

Whose Names Are Unknown, Sanora Babb
Omeros, Derek Walcott
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
The Tortilla Curtain, T.C. Boyle
The Road, Cormac McCarthy