LITS 2108: Modern American Prose Fiction
An enduring debate in American literary studies revolves around the qualities or traits that make a text distinctly American; how would readers know that a novel, for example, is clearly an American novel? Some critics attempt to answer this question by identifying the Great American Novel (GAN)—a single text that best represents/defines the peoples and characteristics of the country. This question arose after the US Civil War when debates lingered about national identity, as well as concerns that the country’s literature did not accurately reflect its national spirit. Critics were especially interested in the novel because it was viewed as the defining genre of that period. By the early 20th century the GAN became a literary obsession that continues even today. There are many contenders for this honor and very little consensus around which novel deserves it. Some doubt whether the GAN could even exist at all. How can one novel possibly capture the diversity of American life? This debate is complicated further due to the fact that our literary tastes, canonical authors, and ideas on ‘American-ness’ have evolved over the century. During this semester we will read four novels that were once (or still are) considered candidates for GAN: Frank Norris’s The Pit (1903), Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961).
LITS 2109: Genre Fiction / Crime Fiction
We will explore how literary genres work in this course using Crime Fiction as our case study. The concept of ‘genre’ is surprisingly complex and has been a major interest for literary critics since the Greek philosopher Aristotle. The term originally referred to the classic forms of poetry, prose, and drama. However, today we typically use the term to describe popular categories of writing, for example Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Romance (to name a few). One purpose of this course is to prepare you to talk and write persuasively about any genre of writing using basic tools of literary analysis. Crime Fiction is one of the most popular forms of genre fiction and serves as a great example for studying the concept. We will read novels by some of the most famous authors in this genre — Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, and Thomas Harris — and discuss what defines their works as Crime Fiction. We will explore how mystery, adventure, and violence are combined to produce this entertaining form of literature.
LITS 2110: Modern African Prose Fiction
The African continent has undergone immense changes over the last 150 years due to European colonialism: social, economic, political, technological, and even literary. The predominant forms of African literature prior to the twentieth century were drama and orature, and in many places they still are. The novel format, which is only a few hundred years old, became more prominent in Africa through British and French colonial education. Foreign headmasters taught canonical European novels to generations of students as examples of ‘great’ literature, texts that often presented racist caricatures of African peoples (if Africa featured at all). Yet these same students and others who followed began writing their own novels—counter-narratives that condemn these racist depictions, affirm indigenous forms of expression, and invite their readers to imagine post-colonial possibilities. We will examine four classic novels that exemplify these aims by authors from eastern, western, and southern Africa. Throughout the semester we will address literary questions like what it means to Africanize the novel and whether we should read these works as realistic depictions of everyday life or as fantasies. We will also discuss broader ethical issues raised in the texts such as what it means to be a person of integrity or how to judge someone’s intentions and actions.
LITS 2208: African Drama, Poetry, and Orature
This course serves as a general introduction to African drama, poetry, and orature. We will read works by authors from across the African continent. Analyzing these texts as printed literature in the university classroom presents some unique challenges, but also opportunities to explore narratives which we might not otherwise access. Drama and poetry are traditionally performative genres practiced across the continent for many centuries in various languages. These genres are influenced by orature in Africa, which features its own conventions not usually found in written literature. Of course, some of the poets and dramatists we will read draw upon Western influences as well. We will sample a variety of innovative texts over the semester, including the traditional oral epic Sunjata, Okot p’Bitek’s epic poem Song of Lawino (1966), poems like J.P. Clark’s “Abiku”, Wole Soyinka’s “Abiku” (1967), David Diop’s “The Renegade” (1956), and Léopold Sédar Senghor’s “Black Woman” (1945), as well as Tawfiq Al-Hakim’s play The Sultan’s Dilemma (1960) and Athol Fugard’s play “MASTER HAROLD” … and the Boys (1982).
LITS 6105: The Cultural Production of Black Internationalism (postgrad)
For this course we will examine texts by black diasporic writers produced in the first half of the twentieth century. Writers, students, activists, and others frequently collaborated in this period, especially during the inter-war years (1919-1938). This was a time of considerable uncertainty. Colonized peoples agitated for the right to self-governance while European empires expanded further into Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean. Socialists and communists challenged the Western democratic vision of how communities should function. Black people from around the world met in cosmopolitan cities like Paris, London, Harlem, and Moscow to discuss these issues, as well as the similarities between their respective struggles. They did not always share the same views, nor were their experiences of class, politics, culture, race, etc. necessarily homogenous. Nevertheless, most insisted that people of color around the world had more in common with each other than not and these similarities served as inspiration for new expressions in literature, philosophy, politics, music, and other forms of cultural production. We will examine a sample of these works over the semester. Unlike in other courses you may have taken at the UWI our readings are not limited by genre or geography. They include poetry, drama, novels, newspapers editorials, and even a religious text. Their authors come from Africa, the US, and the Caribbean. They were produced during an unprecedented time of trans-Atlantic solidarity, which explains their shared interest in the potential connections among black people; these subjects are the focus of our readings.