ENGL1301W

What is the relationship between narrative and institutions of power? How do social forces shape cultural production—and vice versa? This course emphasizes how social contexts such as systemic oppression, war, dispossession, and political movements emerge in and through American literature. We will focus on selected works by U.S. minoritarian writers and artists to explore how literature is constructed and consumed (and by whom?), paying close attention to both form and content as we engage with shifting concepts of nation, representation, empire, and categories of difference (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability). Through class lectures, discussion, and papers, you will develop textual analysis, writing, and communication skills in our examination of the ways authors and texts respond to the dominant systems they and their reader operate within.