INTER-AMERICAN STUDIES

Specific Foundation / Core

The course is also offered to exchange programme students.

This course will aim to • Introduce students to an inter-American approach to contemporary representations of ethnicity and mobility in N. American (US and Canadian) literature • Understand the significance of colonial practices, indigenous cultures and the Black Atlantic in shaping contemporary American and Canadian literature • Offer students a deeper appreciation of N. American literature (US and Canadian) as a rich terrain of contested values regarding cultural belonging, racial and gender identities, transcultural mobilities • Provide a sustained analysis of recent literary works produced by writers of a multiethnic, multicultural background • Encourage students to take an independent role in the research and presentation of literary texts and contextual material, in order to form a better understanding of cross-cultural interconnections between authors, their texts and their contexts

Overview of the Course: This course will introduce third year students to a comparative, inter-American approach to the study of N. American literature. 20th century fiction from the US and Canada will be studied side by side in order to shed light on questions regarding ethnic belonging and national identity in an age of mobility and transcultural interconnections. Students will be introduced to a broad spectrum of writers from a range of ethnic backgrounds, who have enormously diversified the N. American literary scene. The United States and Canada have different histories of immigration, different colonial and postcolonial legacies, and different multicultural and citizenship policies. Nevertheless, both the U.S and Canada originate in white settler cultures that entertain conflicted relationships with indigenous populations, have been part of transatlantic networks that were engaged in slave trade, and are currently grappling with their own insecurities of national identity, continuing racism and the claims of ethnicity. What differences and similarities can we trace in the ways creative writers have responded to similar questions from within these two different - yet neighboring and interconnected - cultural and national contexts? Course Outline: Comparative N. American Studies and its Contexts Wk 1: Introduction to the Course On historical legacies, cultural crossroads, theoretical considerations The students will be introduced to the significance of Empire, indigenous cultures and the Black Atlantic in shaping the foundations of a N. American knowledge-system. We will examine the shift (in N. American literature) from national imageries structured by survival at the frontier and bounded by fixed ideas about racial boundaries, to an emphasis on permeable borderlands, new mobilities, and transcultural connections as structuring forces of the N. American experience. Core material for after class reading: Chapter One from: Reingard M. Nischik (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014. (PROQUEST) • Reingard M. Nischik, “Comparative North American Studies and its Contexts” Wk 2. Negotiating borders and border-crossings: We will delve further into the significance of borders and boundaries for the construction of narratives of identity, national belonging and difference. Attention will be placed on the Canadian-American border, its symbolic connotations and the politics of representation that shapes the experience of crossing the border in short stories by Canadian and American writers. Core material to be studied prior to class: Short Stories: • Alice Munro, “Miles City, Montana” (1986) • Tim O’Brien, “On the Rainy River” (1990) • Joyce Carol Oates, “Crossing the Border” (1976) • Thoman King, “Borders” (1993) Core material for after class reading: Theory: • Chapter Three, “Border Studies, Borderlines, and Liminal Spaces: Crossing the Canada-US Border in North American Border Narratives” from Reingard M. Nischik, Comparative North American Studies: Transnational Approaches to American and Canadian Literature and Culture, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. Indigenous Literatures in Canada and the United States Wk 3: Colonial history, indigenous cultures and new hybridities “From an indigenous point of view, the border between Canada and the United States doesn’t exist” Native American poet Joy Harjo has written. Native North America questions national categories and disciplinary boundaries, much as it reminds us that the legacy of colonialism continues to operate through various forms in a post-colonial era. We will discuss how indigenous Anglophone writers in North America negotiate power structures, group relations and the position of the Native North American individual in contemporary society. Core material to be studied prior to class: Theory: Chapter Five from Reingard M. Nischik (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014. (PROQUEST) • Katja Sarkowsky, “Comparing Indigenous Literatures in Canada and the United States” Wk 4: Rewriting the reservation narrative (I): We will study an excerpt from Sherman Alexie’s (Native American) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The text addresses the experience of contemporary teenagers growing up on reservations at an age of cultural hybridity, globalization, and continuing racial discrimination and social marginalization. We will consider different kinds of mobilities and immobilities. We will also discuss the politics of representation as, despite its popularity and critical acclaim, the text has also been targeted for its depiction of violence, alcoholism, bullying and sexuality on Native American reservations. Core material to be studied prior to class: Excerpt from • Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, 2007. Read up to p 37. • Thomas King, “‘You’ll never believe what happened’ is always a great way to start”, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, Anansi: 2003. [The CBC 2003 Massey Lectures] Read pages 1-18. Wk 5: Rewriting the reservation narrative (II): We will further explore the legacies of colonialism, the vicious cycle of trauma and loss and its representation in contemporary Native-Canadian writing. We will discuss the role of violence in contemporary Native Canadian short stories, and the embeddedness of violence in a dominant pattern of dependency and systematic exploitation. We will also discuss methods of literary reinvention and writing as resistance, revision and vehicle for change. Core material to be studied prior to class: • Thomas King, “The Closer You Get to Canada, the More Things Will Eat Your Horses” (2005) • Eden Robisnon, “Dogs in Winter” (1996) Comparative Race Studies Wk 6: The Black Atlantic and its echoes: A Space for Race in Canada and the US We will discuss question of diaspora and belonging in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. The Black diaspora, in particular, has acquired new meanings related to such notions as global deterritorialization, the Middle Passage/ the Black Atlantic, transnational migration and cultural hybridity. Core material to be studied prior to class: Chapter Four from Reingard M. Nischik (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014. (PROQUEST) • Eva Gruber, “Comparative Race Studies: Black and White in Canada and the United States” AND from Wilfried Raussert (ed), The Routledge Companion to Inter-American Studies, 2017. (PROQUEST) • Isabel Caldeira, “Toni Morrison and Edwidge Danticat: writers-as-citizens of the African diaspora, or ‘the margin as a space pf radical openness.” Wk 7: African-Caribbean diasporas (I): Reading Dionne Brand (Trinidadian-Canadian) and Edwidge Danticat (Haitian-American) We will discuss histories and transnational flows of Black diasporas and the challenges Black diasporic communities experience, which are deeply interwoven with construction of race and gender. Our study of boundaries, racialized bodies, belonging and art will embark with a comparative reading of Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return - a non-fictional essay/meditation on the Middle Passage and the quest for identity and belonging in an age of heterogeneous identities - and Edwidge Danticat’s collection of essays Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Core material to be studied prior to class: • Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, 2001. Read up to p. 24. • Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, 2010. Read the first chapter titled “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work” (up to p 20). Core material to be studied after class: Chapter 39 from: Olaf Kaltmeir et. al (ed), The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, 2019. (PROQUEST) • Peter Wade, “Race.” Wk 8: African-Caribbean diasporas (II): Reading Dionne Brand and Edwidge Danticat This week we will engage in a comparative discussion of creative texts by Brand and Danticat. We will focus on intergenerational conflict, the claims of culture and historical memory and refigurations of belonging. We will also touch upon urban space, narrative re-mapping of urban spaces and diasporic literature. Core material to be studied prior to class: Edwidge Danticat, “New York Day Women” (1991) Excerpt from Dionne Brand’s novel What we All Long For, 2005. Read up until p. 42. Core material for after class reading: Chapter Thirteen from Reingard M. Nischik (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014. (PROQUEST) • Caroline Rosenthal, “North American Urban Fiction.” Perspectives on Multiculturalism: Stories of migration and cultural (mis)translation Wk 9: Multiculturalism in the United States and Canada Canada has long been known by the image of the mosaic, in contradistinction to its American melting-pot neighbor. In 1971 Canada became the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy. We will discuss the two nations’ multicultural history and rhetoric of ethnic contact and conflict, we will touch upon different processes of immigration and integrations, and we will reflect on ongoing paradigms of exclusion. Core material to be studied prior to class: Chapter Three from Reingard M. Nischik (ed), The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014. (PROQUEST) • Sabine Sielke, “Multiculturalism in the United States and Canada” Core material to be studied after class: Chapter 36 from: Olaf Kaltmeir et. al (ed), The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, 2019. (PROQUEST) • Eduardo Restrepo, “Multiculturalism.” Wk 10: Negotiating belonging and cultural (mis)translations At a time when cultural mixings and crossovers are becoming routine in the context of globalizing trends, Dominican-American novelist and poet Julia Alvarez explores the hardships of immigration, acculturation, intergenerational conflict and cultural (mis)translation in her much acclaimed novel How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents (1991). Against the backdrop of Dominican colonial history of racial trauma and class segregation, a family’s exile to the US catapults the four young daughters into life stories that are different yet interconnected. In the excerpts we will study our attention will fall on negotiations of the meaning and effect of displacement, and the gendered experience of various forms of “uprootings” and “regroundings.” Connections and comparisons will be made with Dionne Brand’s and Edwidge Danticat’s writing studied earlier this semester. Core material to be studied prior to class: • Julia Alvarez, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, 1991. Read the chapters titled “The four Girls” (p 40-67) and “A Regular Revolution” (107-132). Core material to be studied after class: Chapter 44 from: Olaf Kaltmeir et. al (ed), The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, 2019. (PROQUEST) • Gilberto Rescher, “Transnational migration.” Wk 11: Identity, community and religion Is ‘faith’ the new ‘race’? Western liberal ideals, with their emphasis on autonomy and instrumental reason, are usually treated as incompatible with the more communitarian values of non-western forms of society. In the way that the fundamentalist recreates the West as a godless, materialistic space of sexual immorality, Western cultural racism constructs ‘belief’ as a dangerous, mad and criminal state of mind. We will engage in a comparative reading of excerpts from Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness (2004) and John Updike’s Terrorist (2006). Core material to be studied prior to class: • Miriam Toews, A Complicated Kindness, 2004. Read Chapters One, two, Three and Seven. (p 1-26 and 47-55) • John Updike, Terrorist, 2006. Read the first chapter (up to p 48). Core material for after class reading: Chapter 40 from: Olaf Kaltmeir et. al (ed), The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, 2019. (PROQUEST) • Heinrich Wilhelm Schafer, “Religious Beliefs.” AND Baumann, Gerd. “Religion: Baggage or Sextant?” in The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities, 1999. Wk 12: Transculturalism (and its discontents) We will consider the growing skepticism surrounding multiculturalism and its treatment of ethnic minorities as representative of bounded collectives. Under the influence of hybridity theories, there has been a shift in favor of more individual modes of inclusion: ie. cultural difference is appreciated as an individual trait. We will read an excerpt from Karen Tei Yamashita’s (Japanese-American) Tropic of Orange (1997), a “manic”, hype, “magical realist” novel that has been praised and challenged alike. We will think critically about narrative technique; and we will focus our attention on how the narrative challenges stereotypes of race and space in LA, and for its indictment of transgressions against African Americans, Latinos, and homelessness. Core material to be studied prior to class: Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange, 1997. Read the following chapters: 5,8,17 and 19. Core material for after class reading: Chapter 30 from: Olaf Kaltmeir et. al (ed), The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, 2019. (PROQUEST) • Afef Benessaieh, “Hybridity, Mestizaje, Créolité.” Wk 12: Revision

Inter-American Studies, Canadian Literature, Comparative N. American Literature, multiculturalism, inter-cultural mobolity

27-02-2021