Skip to main content
Department of English
Search
Log in
Navigation
About
Current Office Hours
Diversity Resources
English Library
Faculty Statement Archives
Internal Dept Resources
Medieval and Early Modern Studies
University Writing Program
Video Guides & Worksheets
Visit us on Facebook
Major/Minor in English
Advising
Creative Writing Application
Honors Program
Internships
Literary Magazines
Major Requirements Guide & FAQ
Minor Requirements
Study Abroad
Why Major in English?
MFA in Creative Writing
Admissions
Events, Prizes, and Resources
MFA Program Faculty
Newly Admitted Grad Students
Resources
Ph.D. in Literature
About
Admissions
Newly Admitted Grad Students
PhD Alumni Directory
Resources
Courses & Schedules
People
News & Events
Off the Syllabus Podcast
Recent News
Contests
Contest Winners
Previous Contest Winners
Newsletters
You are here
Home
»
Courses & Schedules
English 178 - Fall, 2019
Topics in Nations, Regions, and Other Cultural Geographies
Class Information
Instructor:
Wander, Ryan
CRN:
42099
Time:
TR 12:10-1:30
Location:
146 Olson
Description
Literatures of the US West
While the precise geographical contours of the US West have shifted over the course of the nation's history, the region's well-worn tropes probably seem quite a bit less labile than its shifting physical boundaries. Cowboys and "Indians," wide-open frontier spaces and vigilante justice, and a certain kind of toxic masculinity are, for many of us, familiar features of the landscape. Perhaps less familiar are narratives that give aesthetic form to subjects, subjectivities, and spaces that those well-worn tropes crowd out, such as working-class utopias, persecuted Mormons, racialized migrants, bachelor communities, subtly subversive performances of gender, and Orientalist anxieties. This course covers both the well-worn and the less familiar in order to examine the heterogeneous ways in which authors and artists have represented the region, and to consider the relation between these representations and the interests, desires, and social and economic conditions that have shaped the US West over time. Alongside materials including pulp Westerns, regional writing, immigrant fiction, and a range of visual representations of the region, we will read scholarship conducive to theoretical, historicized understandings of literary and artistic production in and about the US West.
Tentative Reading List:
Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart
Sui Sin Far, selections from Mrs. Spring Fragrance
Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage
Bret Harte, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and other selected stories
Frank Norris, "The Third Circle" and other selected stories
John Rollin Ridge, Joaquin Murieta
Helena Maria Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus
Edward Wheeler, Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road
Selected critical and scholarly readings
Grading
Essay 1: 25%
Essay 2: 35%
Final Exam: 20%
Short at-home Writing Assignments: 10%
Participation (including quizzes and in-class writing assignments): 10%