Senior Seminar Course
Dr. Maribel W. Molyneaux
 

English 480: Literatures of America
 

This seminar will focus on the works of racially and ethnically diverse contemporary American writers—Native-American, African-American, Hispanic, and other hyphenated American writers. A central aim of the course is to demonstrate that American literature is less a monolithic tradition leading from Anne Bradstreet to Herman Melville to Raymond Carver than an array of literatures that embody or identify distinct, sometimes contradictory, points of view in specific historical situations. These literatures are not simply pluralistic and diverse insofar as writers identified by race and ethnicity have gained access to the sphere of public discourse; they also investigate assumptions that American writers speak a "common language" linked to the goals of a democratic society. The writers studied in this course, whether perceived as part of the mainstream American literary tradition or not, all write in English. Yet their works demonstrate that the "common language" is a loose, sometimes contentious, association of varying forms of communication, a dense web of distinct practices by which political power can be created, maintained, or challenged. Questions and issues to be addressed in the course include the ways in which racially and ethnically diverse literatures position themselves within the larger context of American literature; the apparent distrust of the (white) reader demonstrated in, for example, Native-American or African-American literatures; culturally-specific uses of literary conventions; and challenges, both literary and political, to existing power relations.
 

The course’s theoretical spine will focus on racially specific theoretical perspectives, including essays by Robert Burns Stepto and Barbara Christian, and on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism, briefly defined here as the coexistence in narrative of distinct, identifiable voices vying for narrative authority. Other theoretical approaches, such as feminist, New Historicist, and deconstructionist approaches, will also be implemented.
 

Readings will focus on the fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and drama of writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Hyemeyohsts Storm, Richard Rodriguez, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, August Wilson, John Edgar Wideman, Maxine Hong Kingston, or Lawson Fusao Inada. To create a literary context, non-ethnic writers might include Raymond Carver, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tim O’Brien, or Tillie Olsen.
 

Course requirements will include oral presentations on topics related to racial and ethnic issues within the United States; topics could include a bibliographic review of individual writers, an historic view of Native-American reservation life, California’s Proposition 187, the position of contemporary literary theory and criticism toward the works of racially and ethnically defined writers, or literary theory and criticism written by such authors. Also required will be the submission of 20-25 pages of written work; this work could be in the form of two short papers or one longer paper. In either case, papers should include evidence of independent research, a demonstration of theoretical knowledge, and appropriate documentation.
 

This course is appropriate for a capstone course because it will expand on courses English majors may have already taken. For instance, the course would supplement American literature courses currently taught by developing an understanding of the racially and ethnically diverse nature of American literature; it would expand on English 371, which includes the literature of cultures outside the United States, with an in-depth look at America’s own diverse literary history; and it would introduce students to the most recent developments in literary theory and critical practice.