OBERLIN COLLEGE

ENGLISH 360 -- RACE AND AMERICAN FICTION

Tuesday/Thursday 3:00-4:15, Fall 1998

Professor: Ms. Gillian Johns

Office: Rice Hall 28

Telephone: 775-8921

Office Hours: Tuesdays 11:45-1:45, Thursdays 12:30-2:30

and by appointment (see me or call the office)

Description of Course:

This is a four-credit course focused on the idea and symbol of race--as opposed, in many cases, to historically lived or empirical experience--as represented in the American literary imagination over the course of approximately one hundred years (about the middle of the nineteenth century to about the middle of the twentieth century). Traditionally, when "race" or "the race problem" has been discussed in American letters and popular magazines, what has often gone unstated and unnoticed is that these terms have tended to indicate only black Americans, as if members of other groups have not also had a race (or, in other words, a socially, culturally, and economically deter-mined and fashioned experience of their identity). But when we look closely at the subject, we may begin to notice lapses and gaps in reasoning or contradictions in thinking. As James Baldwin wrote in Notes of a Native Son: "[T]he Negro problem is nearly inaccessible. It is not only writ-ten about so widely; it is written about so badly. It is quite possible to say that the price a Negro pays for becoming articulate is to find himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate about." Baldwin's frustration notwithstanding, study of the historical use of racial symbolism in American literature and culture has now become an exciting, rapidly growing field within American literary study generally, with the most recent inquiries looking into various constructions of "whiteness" alongside "blackness" and the ways in which these categories often reveal ambivalence about such moral and democratic ambiguities as pleasure, freedom, and social responsibility.

This course makes use of the multiple critical lenses of classic studies exploring the Amer-ican "racial" imagination and new studies in the area of race and culture in order to look freshly at the ways in which both canonical and non-canonical works of American fiction are constructed and engage readers through the subject and associated symbolism. Although this area of study is still open ended and scholars have not come to final conclusions regarding the socio-political positions of many of the authors and novels we will read, students will be exposed to a variety of ways of reading "race" in American literature (including literary-historical and psychoanalytic). By the end of the course, they should be familiar with these preliminary strategies for interpreting individual author's literary techniques and be able to read and discuss both black and white authors exploring "race" with a measure of analytical skills beyond "common sense" identification or personal experience.

Required Texts:

Reader of Selected Critical Essays (to be purchased through the English Department office)

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Penguin, 1977)

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Random, 1993)

Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin, 1986)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or Life Among the Lowly (Norton, 1993)

Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Random House, 1983)

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins (Norton, 1980)

Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (Penguin)

Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry . . . A Novel of Negro Life (Northeastern, 1989)

Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (Random House, 1995)

Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans (Grove, 1989)

William Melvin Kelley, A Different Drummer (Doubleday, 1989)

Expectations:

Class Framework, Attendance, and Participation--As an advanced, four-credit course, this class has been designed with a rigorous reading schedule which presumes students have had some introduction to and experience in college-level literary study and close reading. Although there will be some lecture on period background and context as necessary, the focus here will not prim-arily be on the detailed biographies or careers of the individual authors, but rather on the ways the novels use fictional techniques, invite responses in their readers, relate to one another through thematic and formal similarities, and engage racial symbolism and common clichés and ideologies. The course is structured to permit focused consideration of a combination of several related texts each week--one (usually short) novel and two critical essays. Students are expected to come to each class prepared to discuss the scheduled works and will alternate taking responsibility for opening our discussion with a short (2 to 3-page handwritten) "response" paper drawing out the argument and issues suggested by one of the critical readings. Students are also encouraged to meet individually with the professor for a conference (sign-up sheets will be distributed). Regular class attendance and involvement will contribute (20%) to the final grade.

Course Papers--Students will also produce three (3) papers during the semester, which will con-stitute 80% of the course grade: two short papers (each 20% of grade) and one longer essay (40% of grade). In addition to revising and handing in their "response" papers (initially presented in class) near the end of the semester, students will hand in short papers early in the semester which will most likely be on an assigned topic. Both short papers in final form should be 4 to 5 pages (typed double spaced, with one inch margins all around). Students are to discuss their own ideas and interests for their longer final paper (10 to 12 pages, also typed double spaced, with one inch margins all around) with the professor; this essay should explore a work of American fiction of choice in more depth regarding the topic of the course and should deal with some of the work's technical aspects as well as its theme(s). (More detail will come on these writing assignments.)

Reading and Assignment Schedule:

Thursday, Sept. 3:	Course Introduction; Selected Autobiographical Inquiries into Racial Identity Formation (form "Not Black, Not White," W. E. B. DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, and Hall, "Open Secrets: Memory, Imagination, Southern Identity")
Tuesday, Sept. 8:	D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, and 11); Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Chapters 1 and 2)
Thursday, Sept. 10:	Lawrence and Morrison, cont'd; General Definitions for Literary Study (symbol, character, verisimilitude, and others)
Tuesday, Sept. 15	Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Thursday, Sept. 17:	Poe, cont'd; Leslie Fiedler, "The Blackness of Darkness: The Negro and the Development of American Gothic"; Shelley Fishkin, "Interrogating 'Whiteness,' Complicating 'Blackness': Remapping American Culture"
Tuesday, Sept. 22:	Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or Life Among the Lowly
Thursday, Sept. 24:	Stowe, cont'd; Sterling A. Brown, "Negro Character as Seen by White Authors"; Eric Lott, "Uncle Tomitudes: Racial Melodrama and Modes of Production"
Tuesday, Sept. 29:	Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black
Thursday, Oct. 1:	Wilson, cont'd; Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, "The Comedy of Domination: Psychoanalysis and the Conceit of Whiteness"; Jeffrey Steele, "The Politics of Mourning: Cultural Grief-Work from Frederick Douglass to Fanny Fern"
Tuesday, Oct. 6:	Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
Thursday, Oct. 8:	Twain, cont'd; James M. Cox, "Pudd'nhead Wilson: The End of Mark Twain's American Dream"; Lucius Outlaw, "Toward a Critical Theory of Race"
Tuesday, Oct. 13:	Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
Thursday, Oct. 15:	Chesnutt, cont'd; David Roediger, "From the Social Construction of Race to the Abolition of Whiteness"; bell hooks, "Loving Blackness as Political Resistance"; PAPER #1 DUE
Tuesday, Oct. 20:	FALL BREAK
Thursday, Oct. 22:	FALL BREAK
Tuesday, Oct. 27:	Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry . . . A Novel of Negro Life
Thursday, Oct. 29:	Thurman, cont'd; David Marriott, "Bonding Over Phobia"; Frantz Fanon, "The Fact of Blackness"
Tuesday, Nov. 3:	George S. Schuyler, Black No More . . . ; Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A. D. 1933-1940
Thursday, Nov. 5:	Schuyler, cont'd; Susan Willis, "I Shop Therefore I am: Is There a Place for Afro-American Culture in Commodity Culture?"; Harryette Mullen, "Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness"
Tuesday, Nov. 10:	Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Thursday, Nov. 12:	Cather, cont'd; Slavoj Zizek, "Love Thy Neighbor? No Thanks!"; Ralph Ellison, "Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity"
Tuesday, Nov. 17:	Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans
Thursday, Nov. 19:	Kerouac, cont'd; Richard Dyer, "White"; Alphonso Lingis, "Schizoanalysis of Race"; REVISED RESPONSE PAPERS ACCEPTED
Tuesday, Nov. 24:	HIATUS (Individual Conferences to be Scheduled as Make-Up)
Thursday, Nov. 26:	THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
Tuesday, Dec. 1:	William Melvin Kelley, A Different Drummer
Thursday, Dec. 3:	Kelley, cont'd; bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination"; Houston A. Baker, "Caliban's Triple Play"; LAST DAY TO TURN IN RESPONSE PAPERS
Tuesday, Dec. 8:	INDIVIDUAL SHORT PRESENTATIONS
Thursday, Dec. 10:	INDIVIDUAL SHORT PRESENTATIONS
Tuesday, Dec. 15:	FINAL PAPERS DUE 3:00 p.m., Rice Hall 28