Beginning with one of the great epics of the Western Tradition and culminating with a post-apocalyptic novel, this course explores how literary texts depict, theorize, and otherwise meditate on questions of location, identity, and community. Through a wide range of readings that include Odysseus’s treacherous homecoming, the dramatic appeal of disguise and deception in Shakespearean comedy, the industrial transformation of England’s green and pleasant lands, racial passing in 1920s Harlem, a bottled-up English butler, and an alternate history of the contemporary US, we will investigate how literary texts construct the spaces, styles, and plots essential for the making of shared meanings. By what imaginative means do writers help us think about race, class, and gender? How do texts conceal and reveal social logics of belonging and exclusion? Tracking a course through epic poetry, drama, lyric poetry, memoir, novels, we will combine close stylistic analysis with historical and theoretical accounts. This course introduces students to a range of writing styles and forms (and collaborative work) necessary for flourishing within the English major.
- Teacher: Alexander Millen