English 380B	T. Tensuan
MW 2:30-4	HU

Inscribing the Unspeakable: Representations and Reverberations of Violence in Contemporary American Literature

Acts of violence &endash; a lynching in the back woods of southwestern Pennsylvania, a rape in an alley in Washington, D.C., a hit-and-run on a Long Island roadway, a massacre of children on the Dakota plains &endash; are often described as "senseless" and seen as violent eruptions that create fissures in the foundation of our culture and society. In this course, we will be looking at works that situate such scenes as part of ongoing narratives of oppression, exploitation, and dispossession rather than as "random acts of violence." We will consider the following questions: How do scenes of violence illustrate sites of cultural conflict and transformation? Is there an aesthetics of violence in contemporary American literature? What role do literary works play in establishing, and in subverting, histories and memories of violence? Does a representation of violence reinscribe the discourse surrounding it; does this have the effect of extending the reverberations of violence? What is at stake in our own critical acts and processes of interpretation when we encounter representations of violence? Can literary texts or other cultural productions emancipate readers/viewers from cycles or narratives of violence?

Book list:

David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident

Joseph Bruchac, The Dreams of Jesse Brown

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Carolivia Herron, Thereafter Johnnie

Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior

Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas, Herbert Siguenza, Culture Clash: Life, Death, and Revolutionary Comedy

Suzan Lori Parks, Getting Mother's Body

Ernesto Quiñones, Bodega Dreams

Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

The course reader will contain selection from the work of Benedict Anderson, Terry Eagleton, Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Ruth Gilmore, Audre Lorde, Wahneema Lubiano, Cherrié Moraga, Ann Pelligrini, Adrienne Rich, Elaine Scarry, Mab Segrest, Richard Slotkin, and Anna Deveare Smith

Assignments include a weekly journal, two short (5-7 page) papers, and a semester long project that will be the basis of two class presentations and a year-end project of 12-15 pages.

Class enrollment limited to 15.