ENG 3500 Literature of American Cultures

This course will offer a study of the literature of American cultures with a focus on Native American, Latino/a, Asian American, and African American writers and texts. In its focus on issues of identity(racial-based, class-based, and gender-based), this comparative study of Ethnic American literature explores the ways in which identities are constructed in literary texts. To understand the socio-cultural context of literary works, the course will encourage students to examine the historical background of each author and his/her text as examples of how each respective group responds to life in the United States, in particular its often conflicted and mediated relation with dominant cultural norms. Finally, we will examine how authors deploy imaginative, narrative, and linguistic strategies in literature to comment upon issues of diversity and social injustice. This course may include short stories, novels, poetry, autobiography,memoir, and drama.
Credits: 3.0