Assignments

There are two options for completing the formal writing assignment in this course:  1) a 15-20 page research paper that engages with the debates traced out by the course readings, or uses some of the methodological approaches introduced by the course in a reading of texts (due at the end of the semester); and 2) a 5-7 page book review (due at midterm), and a 10-12 page conference paper (due at the end of the semester).  These options are intended to provide opportunities to practice different critical genres important to professional writing.  Students are encouraged to pick an option early in the semester, based on where they are in their graduate work and other obligations they need to meet during the term.

In addition to these formal written assignments, each seminar participant (including auditors) is required to deliver an oral presentation.  In preparation, you should select and read one of the recommended books or a recent book of your choice, subject to my approval.  A 10-15 minute in-class presentation should introduce the book’s central concerns and its relevance to that week’s topic.  Oral presentations should be supplemented by a one-page brief that summarizes the book’s argument.

SUGGESTED READING FOR PRESENTATIONS

PART I

J. Michael Dash.  Haiti and the United States:  National Stereotypes and the Literary Imagination.  New York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Carol Boyce Davies.  Black Women, Writing, and Identity:  Migrations of the Subject.  New York and London:  Routledge, 1994.

Wai Chee Dimock, Empire for Liberty:  Melville and the Poetics of Individualism.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton UP, 1989.

W.E.B. DuBois. Darkwater:  Voices from Within the Veil.  Minneola, NY:  Dover, 1999.

Paul Gilroy.  The Black Atlantic:  Modernity and Double Consciousness.  Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1993.

Winston James.  Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia:  Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America.  New York and London:  Verso, 1998.

John Carlos Rowe.  Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism:  From the Revolution to World War II.  Oxford:  Oxford UP, 2000.

Eric Sundquist. To Wake the Nations:  Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1993.

Penny Von Eschen.  Race Against Empire:  Black Americans and Anti-Colonialism, 1937-1957.  Ithaca:  Cornell UP, 1997.

PART II

Arjun Appadurai.  Modernity at Large:  Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.  Minneapolis:  U of Minnesota P, 1996.

Homi Bhabba.  The Location of Culture.  New York and London:  Routledge, 1994.

Timothy Brennan.  At Home in the World:  Cosmopolitanism Now.  Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1997.

James Clifford.  Routes:  Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.  Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1997.

Caren Kaplan.  Questions of Travel:  Postmodern Discourses of Displacement.  Durham:  Duke UP 1996.

Pico Iyer.  Falling off the Map:  Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home.  New York:  Vintage, 2000.

Ross Posnock, Color and Culture:  Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual.  Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1998.

Bruce Robbins.  Feeling Global:  Internationalism in Distress.  New York:  New York UP, 1999.

Bruce Robbins and Pheng Cheah, eds.  Cosmopolitics:  Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation.  Minneapolis:  U of Minnesota P, 1998.

Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake, eds.  Global/Local:  Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary.  Durham:  Duke UP, 1996.

PART III

Frederick Buell.  National Culture and the New Global System.  Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.

C.L.R. James.  American Civilization.  Oxford and Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell P, 1993.

Winston James.  A Fierce Hatred of Injustice:  Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion.  New York and London, 2000.

Lisa Lowe.  Immigrant Acts:  On Asian American Cultural Politics.  Durham:  Duke UP, 1996.

Jose David Saldivar. Dialectics of Our America:  Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History.  Durham:  Duke UP, 1991.

Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt.  Post-Colonial Theory and the United States”  Race, Ethnicity, and Literature.  Jackson:  U of Mississippi P, 2000.

Doris Sommer.  Proceed with Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas.  Cambridge:  Harvard UP, 1999.

Robert Young.  Colonial Desire:  Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race.  New York and London:  Routledge, 1994.

PART IV

Peter Carafiol.  The American Ideal: Literary History as a Worldly Activity.  New York:  Oxford UP, 1991.

Paul Lauter.  From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park:  Activism, Culture, and American Studies.  Durham:  Duke UP, 2001.

John Carlos Rowe, ed.  Post-Nationalist American Studies.  Berkeley and Los Angeles:  U of California P, 2000.