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BTAN3014MA04

North American Department, IEAS, University of Debrecen, Fall 2012

Topics in North American Literature after 1900

THE LIFE AND ART OF TONI MORRISON

Fall 2012 Zoltán Abádi-Nagy, office: main bldg., 120/2

TH 10:00-11:40 Phone: (52) 512-900/22507 (no voice mail)

Rm.: main bldg. 119 E-mail:

Office hours: TH 11:40-12:30

and by appointment.

Make-up classes, when needed:

Prospectus

The seminar will be a figure course, involving a detailed study of Nobel-laureate Toni Morrison’s art of fiction, through discussions of some major novels as well as some of her theoretical writing and interviews. The world of her fiction confronts us with, is also thematically representative and technically illustrative of, much that has been at the centre of social-cultural as well as literary debates in America the past four decades. Thus, reading and discussing her texts requires immersion in, or, at least basic familiarity with theories of race and ethnicity, Cultural Studies and Cultural Criticism, postcoloniality, self and (cultural) identity, psychoanalysis, Gender Studies and Black Feminism, modernity and postmodernity, deconstruction, intertextuality, dialogism, orality and the vernacular, magical realism, reader-response criticism, rhetorical criticism, genre theory, narrative theory, and reconceptualizations in (New) American Studies.

Class Format: discussion combined with brief lecture sections and debates

Credit: 3 credit hours.

General Course Requirements

Students will be expected to attend class faithfully, to keep up with the readings, and to come to class prepared with questions and comments for discussion. The classes will be conducted in an atmosphere in which the instructor and the students take the time to discuss readings and share their insights. We can set aside part of any class meeting for informal discussion of our work if needed.

Specific Requirements

Reader's journal; informed attendance; participation in class discussion; presentation; writing workshop; in-class essay; out-of-class essay; final test.

Presentation

One ten-minute presentation (or fifteen minutes if two students team up to do one): an exposition and critique of a PRINTED critical essay based on any ONE of these theories: race and ethnicity, Cultural Studies and Cultural Criticism, postcoloniality, self and (cultural) identity, psychoanalysis, Gender Studies and (Black) Feminism, modernity and postmodernity, deconstruction, intertextuality, dialogism, orality and the vernacular, magical realism, myth, psychoanalysis, reader-response criticism, rhetorical criticism, genre theory, narrative theory, or one Morrison essay (from Playing in the Dark or elsewhere)—in relation to any ONE Morrrison novel. The presenter’s aim is to generate a good debate by using the interrogative (question-and-answer) method. Sign-up deadline for presentations: February 19. (Maximum two presentations per class session.) Sign-up sheet available.



Writing Assignments

JOURNAL—Each student will keep a reader's journal in a separate notebook, making an entry of at least one page per assigned reading, raising at least one pertinent issue for classroom discussion. You are free to choose your own topics. (More about this in class.) The journal entries may be hand-written or typed, as you prefer. Journals will be collected at least twice during the term, beginning the fourth week of class.

PAPERS—1) The in-class essay topics will be based on the novels discussed up to that point (topic assigned). 2) The out-of-class essay(eight double-spaced, word-processed pages) will be both theoretically guided and a topic of your own designing. (This will be elaborated in class.) It is a research essay, with at least 2 printed sources quoted. You can sign up for individual conference sessions in my office hours if you have difficulty in designing a topic. The take-home essay will be discussed in a peer workshop before it is submitted. The writing workshop is fundamental to the course. Students who do not participate in it, because they are absent without good cause or do not have a fully drafted version of their paper, will lose 5 points on the grade of the paper once it is handed in. You must give me and your fellow students copies in the class preceding the project session week. For due date see "Schedule" below. Assignments 1 and 2 will be discussed in detail in class. 3) The final test will be cumulative, a combination of various kinds of identification questions. It will be described more fully in class near the end of the semester.

N.B.

  1. Documentation, format—When you consult or quote a source, document it according to the usual academic principles. In all matters of form, use the MLA format. If you have questions about how to do so, ask me, or ask a librarian for the 4th or 5th edition of the MLA Handbook.
  2. Editing—Take pride in your work, edit it carefully, root out mechanical errors. Expect your out-of-class paper and final exam essay to lose one point per five errors.
  3. Font, margins—Out-of-class papers must be typed in an ordinary font. Those with abnormally wide margins or typeface, will be returned unmarked, and must be resubmitted as directed.
  4. Late paper policy—The presentation deadlines are not negotiable. Out-of-class essays can be submitted on May 7 at the latest, without penalty.
  1. Academic misconduct—Plagiarism will not be tolerated. You can be assigned a grade of F for it. The Institute of English and American Studies expects its students to adhere to the university’s code of student conduct, especially as it pertains to academic misconduct.

The following statement must be typed on the title page of your essay and signed in

hand: “This paper has been prepared in full awareness of the international norms of

academic conduct.”

Grading

Participation in discussion (inclusive of occasional quizzes—unannounced, and evaluated on an S/F basis, F meaning a loss of one point in each case—designed to check if you have actually read the day’s reading) will count 10%,

journal: 10%,

presentation 10%,

in-class essay 10%,

take-home essay 30%,

final test 30%.

A/5=91-100; B/4=81-90; C/3=71-80; D/2=61-70; F/1 is 60% or below.

N.B.

  1. Course requirements—The out-of-class essay and the final test are course requirements in that without satisfying these, you cannot pass the course.

2. Incompletes—Incomplete grades will be possible only if you must miss classes or the final test because of verified illness or for scheduled activities of official university student organizations—if (this applies to the latter case) I am notified in advance of your absence.

3. Absence policy—Grades can be lowered for three unexcused absences and denied for more than three. If circumstances exist that cause you to be absent more than twice in the semester, make an appointment to speak to me about your progress in the course. However, more than three unexcused absences will automatically fail the course. It is possible to fail the course by absences alone.

4. Tardy policy—Tardiness and early departures are not allowable. They are offensive to your fellow students and to the instructor because they disrupt class work. If you have a compelling reason for arriving late or leaving early, speak with me about the problem. If you regularly cut the beginning and/or the end of class sessions, it can add up to unexcused full-class-time absences.

5. Extra credit—You can get 10 extra credits for researching and electronically submitting the periodical bibliography of any ONE of the Morrison novels (except Jazz); or, for reading Morrison’s Tar Baby, Paradise, Love, or A Mercy (two students each) and preparing a two-page, single-spaced handout (story and brief discussion of themes – one page each) about the novel of your choice. (Introducing and discussing one of her two nonfiction books – The Dancing Mind or Playing in the Dark – is also possible.) More about this in class. A sign-up sheet will be made available.

6. Borderline grades—If your grade is borderline, it depends on attendance and the general pattern of your work (performance improvements) if you can get a break.

7. Discussing grades—If you have questions about how I evaluated your work, please stop by to see me. It is my policy to discuss grades in person only, and not over the telephone.

8. Disabilities policy—Students who need course adaptations or accommodations because of certified disability or who have emergency medical information to share, should speak to me after the first class meeting.

S C H E D U L E

Month / Day / Assignments
September / 20 / Orientation
27 / The Bluest Eye 1: “Autumn,” Winter”
October / 4 / The Bluest Eye 2: “Spring,” “Summer”
Sign-up deadline for presentations
Month / Day / Assignments
October / 11 / Sula 1: “Part One”
25 / Sula 2: „Part Two“
   Start conferences as needed   
November / 8 / Song of Solomon 1: Part I, chs 1-3
In-class essay
15 / Song of Solomon 2: Part I, chs 4-9
22 / Song of Solomon 3: Part II, chs 10-15
29 / Beloved 1: One/1-2
December / 6 / Beloved2: Two and Three
Writing workshop
13 / Jazz 1
20 / Jazz 2 / Final test / Out-of-class essays due

TEXTS: Morrison’s novels and essay volume in various editions.

Recommended Theoretical and Critical Reading

THEORY, GENERAL CRITICISM

(Items indicated as “IL” are available in the Institute’s Library.)

Baker, Houston A., Jr. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic.

Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988.

Barkan, Elliott Robert, ed. A Nation of Peoples: A Sourcebook on America’s Multicultural

Heritage. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999.

Barrett, Lindon. Blackness and Value. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. IL

Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

Buenker, John D., and Lorman A. Ratner, eds. Multiculturalism in the United States: A

Comparative Guide to Acculturation and Ethnicity. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992.

Cooke, Michael G. Afro-American Literature in the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale UP,

1984. IL

De Weever, Jacqueline. Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women’s Fiction. New York:

St. Martin’s, 1991. IL

Dickson-Carr, Darryl. The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction.

New York: Columbia UP, 2005. IL

Evans, Mari, ed. Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. New York: Anchor,

1984. IL

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

Houghton, 1980. IL

Galens, Judy, Anna Sheets, and Robyn V. Young, eds. Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural

America. Vols. 1 and 2. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1995.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.

New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

---, ed. Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology. New York: Meridian, 1990. IL

Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in

America. New York: Bantam, 1984.

Graham, Maryemma, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. IL

Hernton, Calvin C. The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers: Adventures in Sex,

Literature, and Real Life. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

Hogue, W. Lawrence. Race, Modernity, Postmodernity. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.

Juan, E. San, Jr. Racism and Cultural Studies: Critiques of Multiculturalist Ideology and the

Politics of Difference. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002.

Lee. A. Robert. Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America.

London: Pluto, 1998.

---. Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/s and

Asian American Fictions. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2003.

Lerner, Gerda, ed. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York:

Vintage, 1972.

Levine, Lawrence W. The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Culture and History.

Boston, MA: Beacon, 1996.

McKee, Patricia. Producing American Races: Henry James, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison.

??? IL

Miller, John J. The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism has Undermined the

Assimilationist Ethic. New York: Free, 1998.

Muller, Gilbert H. New Strangers in Paradise:The Immigrant Experience and Contemporary

American Fiction. Lexington KY: UP of Kentucky, 1999.

Napier, Winston, ed. African American Literary Theory: A Reader. New York: New York UP,

2000. IL

Olney, James, ed. Afro-American Writing Today. Anniversary issue of Southern Review.

Baton Rouge. LA: U of Louisiana P, 1989.

Palumbo-Liu, David, ed. The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions.

Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995.

Reed, Ishmael, ed. MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace. New York:

Viking, 1997.

Ruiz, Vicki L., and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S.

Women’s History. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Russell, Cheryl. Racial and Ethnic Diversity: Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and

Whites. Ithaca, NY: New Strategist, 1998.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random/Vintage, 1978.

San Juan, E., Jr. Racism and Cultural Studies: Critiques of Multiculturalist Ideology and the

Politics of Difference. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2002.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society.

New York: Norton, 1992.

Schmidt Alvin J. The Menace of Multiculturalism: Trojan Horse in America. Westport, CT:

Praeger, 1997.

Singh, Armritjit, Joseph T. Skerrett, Jr., and Robert E. Hogan, eds. Memory, Narrative, and

Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures. Boston: North Eastern UP, 1994.

---, and Peter Schmidt, eds. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and

Literature. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2000.

Sollors, Werner, ed. The Invention of Ethnicity. New York, Oxford UP, 1989.

---, ed. Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader. New York: New York UP, 1996.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York:

Thernston, Stephen, ed. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard UP, 1980.

Williams, Lisa. The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf.

Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. IL

Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, ed. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A

Reader. New York: Columbia, 1994.

CRITICISM—AUTHOR AND INDIVIDUAL WORKS

(Items indicated “IL” are available in the Institute’s Library)

MORRISON – background literature and general works on Morrison

Abádi Nagy Zoltán. “Toni Morrison.” Mai amerikai regénykalauz, 1970-1990. Budapest: 1995.

379-81. IL

Adams, Anne. “Straining to Make Out the Words to the ‘Lied’: The German Reception of Ton

Morrison.” McKay, Critical Essays 190-214. IL

Atkinson, Yvonne. “Language That Bears Witness: The Black English Oral Tradition in the

Works of Toni Morrison.” Conner 12-30. IL

Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative:

Femininity Unfettered. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. IL

Bjork, Patrick Bryce. The Novels of Toni Morrison: The Search for Self and Place within

the Community.

Bloom, Harold. Toni Morrison. Modern Critical Views S.

Bouson, J. Brooks. Quiet As It’s Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni

Morrison. Albany: State U of New York P, 2000.

---. “’Speaking the Unspeakable’: Shame, Trauma, and Morrison’s Fiction.” Bouson 1-21.

Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins UP, 1996. IL

Christian, Barbara T. “Layered Rhythms: Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison.” Peterson 19-36.

Conner, Marc. C., ed. The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson:

P of Mississippi, 2000. IL

---. “From the Sublime to the Beautiful: The Aesthetic Progression of Toni Morrison.” Conner

49-76. IL

Davis, Cynthia A. “Self, Society and Myth in Toni Morrison’s Fiction.” Peach, Toni Morrison

(New Casebooks) 27-42.

Dennard, Carolyn. “The Convergence of Feminism and Ethnicity in the Fiction of Toni

Morrison.” McKay, Critical Essays 171-79. IL

DeKoven, Marianne. “Postmodernism and Post-Utopian Desire in Toni Morrison and E. L.

Doctorow.” Peterson 111-30.

Drake, Kimberly. “Rape and Resignation: Silencing the Victim in the Novels of Morrison and

Wright.” Literature Interpretation Theory 6.1 (1995): 63-72.

Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the formation of African American identity (sic).

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. IL

Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison’s Fiction. Understanding Contemporary American Literature.

1996.Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1999.

Gates, Henry Louis, and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and

Present.

Harding, Wendy, and Jacky Martin. “Projections of Self,” and “Modes of Belonging in

Community.”A World of Difference: An Inter-Cultural Study of Toni Morrison’s

Novels.Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 13-35, 87-109.

Harris, Trudier. Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. Knoxville: U of Tennessee

P, 1991. IL

Hirsh, Marianne. The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism.

Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. IL

Hogue, W. Lawrence. Race, Modernity, Postmodernity. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.

---. “Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History of People of Color since the

1960s.” Hogue 1-27.

Kella, Elizabeth. Beloved Communities: Solidarity and Difference in Fiction by Michael

Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, and Joy Kogawa. Uppsala: Uppsala U, 2000. IL

Khayati, Abdellatif. “Representation, Race, and the ‘Language’ of the Ineffable in Toni

Morrison’s Narrative.” African American Review 33.2 (1999): 313-24.

Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood,

1998.

Lester, Cheryl. “Meditations on a Bird in the Hand: Ethics and Aesthetics in a Parable by Toni

Morrison.” Conner 125-38. IL

Matus, Jill L. Toni Morrison. Contemporary World Writers. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998.

---. “Contexts and intertexts.” Matus 1-36.

McBride, Dwight A. “Speaking the Unspeakable: On Toni Morrison, African American

Intellectuals and the Uses of Essentialist Rhetoric.” Peterson 131-52.

McKay, Nellie Y., ed. Critical Essays on Toni Morrison. Boston: Hall, 1988. IL

---, and Kathryn Earle, eds. Approaches to Teaching Toni Morrison.

Middleton, David L., ed. Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Contemporary Criticism. New York:

Garland. 1997.

Morey, Ann-Janine. “Margaret Atwood and Toni Morrison: Reflections on Postmodernism and

the Study of Religion and Literature.” David L. Middleton 247-68.

Morrison, Toni.“Nobel Lecture 1993.” Peterson 267-73.

---. “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.” Evans 339-60. IL

Page, Philip. Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison’s Novels.

Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995.

---. “Morrison’s Novels as Texts, Not Novels.” Page 26-36.

---. “What’s the World For If You Can’t Make It Up the Way You Want It?”Page 178-88.

Peach, Linden. Toni Morrison. Macmillan Modern Novelists. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1995.

Second edition. 2000. IL

---, ed. Toni Morrison. New Casebooks S. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.

---. “Language.” Toni Morrison 128-34.

Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

---. “’Say Make Me, Remake Me’: Toni Morrison and the Reconstruction of African-American