Course Designation: Genre Studies in American Literature

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COURSE CODE: AN 33006BA /

SPRING 2018

Course Designation: Genre Studies in American Literature

From Multiculturalism to Transnationalism: A Literary Survey

Time & Place: Fri 12: 00–13: 40, St 111

Instructor: Lenke Németh

Email:
Tel.: 52 512 900/22069 /

Office Hours:Wed 12:00–12:50, Fri 9:00–9:50, Rm 118, Mbl

COURSE SYNOPSIS

This course is designed to familiarize students with the latest shifts and changes in the American cultural scene as portrayed in selected literary works of a new generation of ethnic writers emerging in the closing decades of the twentieth century.Students will be sensitized to a major paradigm shift of the U.S. entering its post-multicultural phase in the New Millennium and will gain an understanding of a composite cultural identity evolving at present.

The course will explorethe re-definition and re-conceptualization of concepts like ethnicity, race, and Americanness as addressed in the works of newly arising authors who have revitalized the American literature both in form andtheme.

Authors selected for the course include African AmericanAlice Walker (1944-), Mari Evans (1923-2017);Asian American David Henry Hwang (1957-) and Cathy Song (1955-);Indian-born American Bharati Mukharjee (1940-);Chicano Gary Soto (1952-), ChicanaSandra Cisneros (1954-)and Ana Castillo (1953-); (Mexican American Helena Maria Viramontes (1954-), Dominican American Junot Diaz (1968-), Native American Sherman Alexie (1966-), and Filipino American Zamora R. Linmark.

METHOD OF TEACHING

The course will be taught in a seminar format where the class time is devoted to the discussion of the texts on the agenda as well as of the critical works that will be assigned during the orientation class.

ASSESSMENT

Active participation and attendance are required.

Writing Assignments

[1] Midterm test: it will check students’ familiarity with the texts, their contexts, and the critical studies discussed up to that point in the semester.

[2] Take-home essay: an analytical essay that addresses one of the issuesdiscussed or raised in the seminar. Format: 8 pages, 2,5 cm margins, Times New roman (12), double spaced, full and correct citation, alphabetical works cited (MLA Style), fastened, with student’s name on each page.

Deadline: May 14th

In-class presentation: a 5-10-minute talk on a critical or a theoretical essay related to the work on the agenda. It should serve as a good starting point for the discussion of the relevant work of art.

Required reading

The course material is available either in print format or electronically (marked E) in the Institute library.

Evaluation Criteria

Students are advised that the quality of theirwritten and spoken performance will count significantly toward their final grade.

Participation: 20%

Presentation: 20 %

Midterm test: 30 %

Take-home essay: 30 %

N.B. No re-sit for the in-class paper.

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

(1) Feb 16 Orientation

Introduction.

(2) Feb 23

Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973) “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” (1984) (E)

(3) March 2

Bharati Mukharjee, “A Wife’s Story” (1988) (E)
Sandra Cisneros, “Never Marry a Mexican” (1991), (E)

(4) March 9

Helena Maria Viramontes, “The Cariboo Cafe” (1983) (E)

(5) March 16 HOLIDAY

(6) March 23

Ana Castillo, So Far From God (1993) (E)

(7) March 30 GOOD FRIDAY (HOLIDAY)

(8) April 6CONSULTATION WEEK

(9) April 13

MIDTERM

(10) April 20

Linmark R. Zamora, “The Two Phillipinos,” “Tongue-Tied” (1995) (E)
Junot Diaz, “Drown,” (1996) (E)

(11) April 27

Sherman Alexie, “Every Little Hurricane,”"This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" (1993) (E)
Excerpts from the movie Smoke Signals, dir. Chis Eyre, 1998

(12) May 4

David Henry Hwang, Yellowface (2007) (E)

(13) May 11

Ethnic Poetry
Cathy Song (1955-), “Picture Bride”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), “We Real Cool”
Gary Soto (1952-), “Mexicans Begin Jogging”
Mari Evans (1923-2017), "I am a Black Woman

May 14th ESSAY DUE

(14) May 18

Closing

BIBLIOGRAPHY SUGGESTED

BOOKS

Anzaldúa, Gloria. La Frontera/Borderlands: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute P, 1987.

Brater, Enoch, ed. Feminine Focus:The New Women Playwrights. Oxford, OUP, 1989.

Brater, Enoch and Ruby Cohn, eds. Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1990.

Cisneros, Sandra. “Never Marry a Mexican.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.New York: Random House, 1991.

Christian, Barbara: Women Writers: Texts and Contexts. “Everyday Use.” Alice Walker. Rutgers UP, 1994.

Diaz, Junot. Drown. London: Faber, 1997.

---. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. London: Faber, 2008.

Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman:Minority Women Writers of the United States.Boston: Houghton, 1980.

Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.

Garner, Stanton. B. Jr. Phenomelogy and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.

Huerta, Jorge. Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Jenckes, Norma, ed. New Readings in American Drama: Something’s Happening Here.New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

Geis, Deborah R. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue inContemporary American Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993. *

Manzanas, Ana Maria, ed. Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line. Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature, no. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2007.

Mukharjee, Bharate. “A Wife’s Story.” The Middleman and Other Stories. Grove P, 1999.

Ozieblo, Barbara and María Dolores Narbona-Carrión, eds. Codifying the National Self: Spectators, Actors and the Dramatic Text. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.

Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005

Viramontes, Helena Maria. The Moths and Other Stories. Houston: Arte Publico P, 1995.

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Christian, Women Writers. 23-39.

---. “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Christian, Women Writers. 39-51.

SCHOLARLY ARTICLES

Bertram D Ashe, “A New Foreword” in Trey Ellis’s Platitudes. Northeastern UP, 2003. vii-3

Abramson, Myka-Tucker. “The Money Shoot: Economies of Sex, Guns, and Language in Topdog/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 78-97.

Brady, Mary Pat. “The Contrapuntal Geographies of Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.” American Literature 71.1 (1999):117-50.

Carbonell, Ana María. “From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros.” MELUS 24.2.(1999):19-29.

Davies, G. Roco. “Have Come. Are Here: Reading Filipino/a American Literature.” MELUS 29.1 (2004): 5-18.

Deeney, John J. “Of Monkeys and Butterflies: Transformation in M.H. Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey and D. H. Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” MELUS 18.4 (1993):21-41.

Doyle, Jacquelyn. “More Room of her Own: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.” MELUS 19.4 (1994): 5-35.

Ellis, Trey. “The New Black Aesthetic.” Callalo 38 (1989): 233-43.

Ganz, Robin. “Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond.” MELUS 19.1 (1994):19-29.

Irmscher, Christoph. “’The Absolute Power of a Man’?Staging Masculinity in Giacomo Pucciniand David Henry Hwang.”American StudiesQuarterly 42. 4 (1998): 619-29.

Lauretis, de Teresa. “Popular Culture, Public and Private Fantasies: Femininity and Fetishism in David Cronenberg’s ‘M. Butterfly.’” Signs 24. 2(1999): 303-34.

Moore, Deborah Owen. “La Llorona Dines at the Cariboo Café: Structure and Legend in the Work of Helena María Viramontes.” Studies in Short Fiction 35 (1998). 277-86.

Nubla, Gladys. “The Politics of Relations: “Creole Languages in “Dogeaters” and “Rolling the R’s” MELUS 29.1 (2004):199-218.

Remen, Kathryn. “The Theater of Punishment: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Michael Foucalt’s Discipline and Punish.” Modern Drama 37. 3 (1994): 391-400.

Reyes, Eric Estuar. “American Developmentalism and Hierarchies of Difference in R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's”Journalof Asian American Studies 10. 2 2007. 117-140.

Rossini, D. Jon. “The Contemporary Ethics of Violence:. Cruz, Solis and Homeland Security.”

Saaal, Ilka. “Performance and Perception: Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly.”American Studies 42.4 (1998): 629- 45.

Tucker-Abramson, Myka. “The Money Shot: Economies of Sex, Guns and Language in Topdog/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 77-97.

Shaw, Stephanie.Real Women Have Curves., Performing Arts Review, Nov 4, 1993.

Shin, Andrew. “Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden Gate.” MELUS 27.1(2002): 177-99.