ENROLL

Kofi Owusu

The texts we will read and the themes to be discussed include: the quest for home and belonging in Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes; transitions in Obama's Dreams from My Father; difficult and essential conversations in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me; trauma and healing in Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. Our related focus on expository writing will be complemented by a final writing assignment that offers you the option to craft either a Letter to Your Younger Self on transitions, or an Autobiographical Fragment in which you trace your search for belonging.

Held for new first year students

Pierre Hecker

With an emphasis on critical reading, writing, and the fundamentals of college-level research, this course will develop students' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the relationship between drama and film and the social and cultural contexts of which they are (or were) a part and product. The course explores the various ways in which these plays and movies (which might include anything and everything from Spike Lee to Tony Kushner to Christopher Marlowe) generate meaning, with particular attention to the social, historical, and political realities that contribute to that meaning. An important component of this course will be attending live performances in the Twin Cities. These required events may be during the week and/or the weekend.

Held for new first year students. Extra Time required.

Pierre Hecker

Cross-listed with English 244

Cross-listed with ENGL 244.00

Timothy Raylor

Adriana Estill

The last few years have placed Latinx communities under siege and in the spotlight. The demands of the census and new policies around immigration mean that who counts as Latinx and why it matters has public visibility and meaning. Simultaneously, the last few years have seen an incredible growth of new literary voices and genres in the world of Latinx letters. From fictional and creative nonfiction accounts of detention camps, border crossings, and asylum court proceedings to lyrical wanderings in bilingualism to demands for greater attention to Afrolatinidad and the particular experiences of Black Latinxs--Latinx voices are rising. We will engage with current literary discussions in print, on twitter, and in literary journals as we chart the shifting, developing terrain of Latinx literatures. 

Pierre Hecker

Cross-listed with ENGL 144

Arnab Chakladar

Authors from the colonies and ex-colonies of England have complicated our understandings of the locations, forms and indeed the language of the contemporary English novel. This course will examine these questions and the theoretical and interpretive frames in which these writers have often been placed, and probe their place in the global marketplace (and awards stage). We will read a number of major novelists of the postcolonial era from Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and the diaspora as well as some of the central works of postcolonial literary criticism.

Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one additional 6 credit English course