Graduate Course Offerings

Spring 2010

War and Renaissance: Contrasting Transatlantic Relationships in American Literature

In this seminar, we will examine the literature and letters of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. We will be interested in transatlantic connections, i.e. how these wars reflected relationships between America and European countries and how those relationships were changed by the ideas at the heart of these two conflicts. Besides contrasting the different kinds of transatlanticism at work in the Revolutionary War and American Civil War, we will reflect on how notions of transatlanticism impacted American nationalism, particularly with regard to the politics of remembering national conflicts, whether foreign or domestic. To accomplish this, we will also study works by authors of the movement known as the American Renaissance who wrote literary works that drew a distinct portrait of the American identity in such a way that reveal both a celebration and dismissal of the European origins of American literary traditions. The field of Transatlantic Studies, sometimes referred to as Hemispheric Studies, is a relatively new context for the study of American literature and represents contemporary developments in the methodologies of American studies research.

 

English 656	Themes/Genres/Problems in Lit
#9707	Rob Burton
Day and Time:	W 3-5:50
Location:	TALR 106

A new genre of literature has developed in the last 30 years that has received much critical attention yet is difficult to categorize. The genre consists of writers who write in English yet who do not always originate from, or possibly even identify with, England or America. Sometimes they are classified as “Multicultural writers” (because they embrace two or more national cultures); sometimes they are classified as “Postcolonial writers” (because they invariably originate from cultures that have bee linked to European or American colonial practices).

In this course, I am giving them the generic title of “Artists of the Floating World.”  Using my book Artists of the Floating World: Contemporary Writers Between Cultures as a guide, we will examine the works of 4 such authors: Kazuo Ishiguro, Bessie Head, Bharati Mukherjee, and Salman Rushdie.

 

For more information, please contact

Department of English
Taylor Hall
California State University, Chico
Chico, CA  95929-0830
530-898-5124

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