WRITERS OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH AND THEIR LITERARY LEGACY

Specific Foundation

The course is also offered to exchange programme students.

Learning Outcomes: - The study of writers of the American South whose work was produced during the 20th century - An understanding of the historical and social circumstances that formed the backdrop for Southern literary production during the 20th century - A critical appraisal of Southern writers’ literary legacy and their impact on current redefinitions of a more geographically and ideologically expansive “South” or “Souths”

Course Outline Week 1: Introduction (Oct 11th) Week 2: Romancing the South (Oct 18th) Week 3: The South as a “Problem” (Oct 25th) Week 4: The South and the Impossible Load of the Past (Nov 1st) Week 5: The South and Invisibility (Nov 8th) Week 6: The South and the Civil Rights Movement (I) (Nov 15th) Week 7: The South and the Civil Rights Movement (II) (Nov 22nd) Week 8: Queering the South (Nov 29th) Week 9: Grotesque Transgressions (I) (Dec 6th) Week 10: Grotesque Transgressions (II) (Dec 13th) Week 11: The displaced South (Dec 20th) Week 12: From American South to South America (Jan 10th) Week 13: Revision/ Discussion/ Practicing annotation and close-reading (Jan 217h) Course Content (all texts, core and recommended, will be uploaded on e-learning)  Week 1: Introduction Introduction to the course, its aims and objectives.  Week 2: Romancing the South Attachment to the southern land, loving and hating that land, has always been taken as a determining feature of what it means to be southern. The plantation novel existed throughout the nineteenth century, yet Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gone With the Wind and the immense industry in spawned – from the film version to collectibles and sequels – are key elements in the continued force of the Old South mythologies. We will discuss the notions of “South as a cause”, “new South vs old South” and the role of nostalgia in reshaping or freezing imagery about southern history and identity. Core Reading: Welty, Eudora. “Place in Fiction.” In The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews. New York: Vintage, 1979. Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. Reprint (New York 1993). Read the first four chapters to get a feel for the language and imagery. Recommended reading: McPherson, Tara. “Romancing the South: A Tour of the Lady’s Legacies, Academic and Otherwise.” In Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003. From the Blackwell Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South (2007) – the chapter titled “Writing Southern Cultures” p 2-19. Uploaded for you. Watch the movie Gone with the Wind (1939), directed by Victor Fleming; produced by David O. Selznick  Week 3: The South as a “Problem” In what sense has the South figured as a “Problem” to America? The South historically has presented a special and troubling problem to American ideals, identity and practices. The South, after all, retained slavery two generations longer than did the rest of the Union and relinquished its institution only after losing a Civil War. Only the South organized itself by law, custom and force through racial segregation and white supremacy for almost seventy years. Yet social conditions become social problems only through a cultural politics that interprets these conditions as “problematic” and leads to a collective perception of a region as a “problem.” Core Reading: Smith, Lillian. From Killers of the Dream. Baldwin, James. “Going to Meet the Man” Recommended Reading: Cobb, C. James. “The Mind of the South” in Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Griffin, J. Larry. “Why was South a Problem to America?” In The South as an American Problem. Ed Larry J. Griffin and Don H. Doyle. Athens, Georgia: Georgia University Press, 1995.  Week 4: The South and the Impossible Load of the Past Ambivalence about both the Old South legend and the New South identity permeated the literary worlds of many of the Southern Renaiscence writers. We will examine how in the 1930s southern writers began to ask how such an appealing and glorious past could have degenerated into such a dismal and defective present. Ambivalence about the essence of southern identity will be approached through a short story by William Faulkner. Core Reading: Faulkner, William. “Dry September.” Recommended Reading: Cobb, C. James. “The South of Guilt and Shame” in Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.  Week 5: The South and Ιnvisibility This week we will discuss writers who devoted their talents to re-examining the South during the period between the end of World War I and the civil rights movement. We will pay attention to the emphasis placed on contradictions of the present and uncertainties regarding the future. We will discuss the importance of a black history of slavery and invisibility, as well as a rigid class system within the white community, and the ways they shaped/distorted identities and self-awareness. Core Reading: Excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Welty, Eudora. “Where is the Voice Coming From?” Recommended Reading: Cobb, C. James. “Southern Writers and ‘The impossible Load of the Past’” in Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.  Week 6: The South and the Civil Rights Movement (I) This week will offer a brief history of black racial relations in the US and the impact of the civil rights movement on racial relations in the South. We will discuss the conflict between black identity politics that adhere to traditional black culture and revisions of black cultural legacy brought about by the civil rights movement. W.E.B. Du Bois “I. Of our Spiritual Strivings” from The Souls of Black Folk Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” Flannery O’Connor. “Everything that Rises must Converge.” Recommended Reading: For an overview of 20th century black american history watch the 2013 movie The Butler (dir. By Lee Daniels)  Week 7: The South and the Civil Rights Movement (II) We will carry on our discussion of the conflict between black identity politics that adhere to traditional black culture and revisions of black cultural legacy brought about by the civil rights movement. Zora Neale Huston. “How it Feels to be Coloured Me.” Alice Walker. “Everyday use.”  Week 8: Queering the South Randall Kenan’s writing explores racial and sexual boundaries through an innovative narrative style that blends realistic detail with the supernatural and Southern folklore. We will read excerpts from his work and address the following question: How do the complex intersections of race, religion and sexuality in Kenan’s narrative expand our conceptions of a southern African American literary landscape? Core readings: Randall Kenan. “The Foundations of the Earth.”  Week 9: Grotesque Transgressions (I) We will read the first part of Carson McCullers’ novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café” and we will pay close attention to the delicate balance her narrative weaves between horror and human compassion. Core Reading: McCullers, Carson. “The Ballad of the Sad Café.” (Penguin Classics Reprint, 2002).  Week 10: Grotesque Trasgressions (II) We will read the second part of Carson McCullers’ novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café.” We will explore constructions of femininity, masculinity and androgyny in her text, and will discuss the ways in which McCullers’ grotesque subjects create a menacing and ultimately transgressive literary landscape. Recommended Reading: Consult: Bloom, Harold (ed). Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Café. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.  Week 11: The Displaced South We will discuss the destabilizing and depersonalizing effects of industrialization through a short story by Flannery O’Connor that weaves issues of racial prejudice with concerns about southern identity and the changes brought about by migration. By the 1970s the South had become one of the main immigrant-receiving areas of the nation. We will read “The Displaced Person” with a keen eye for uncovering new definitions of displacement, otherness, foreignness, inhumanity. Core Reading: O’Connor, Flannery. “The Displaced Person” in The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. Recommended Reading: Theodosiadou, Youli. “Ethhnicity as Otherness in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The Displaced Person.’” In Southern Ethnicities. Thessaloniki: Kornelia Sfakianaki Editions, 2008.  Week 12: From American South to South America We will expand our vocabulary of Southern imagery by engaging in a comparative appreciation of the Americas. This is especially useful in breaking the binary between the U.S. North and South. We will consider the U.S. South in relation to Latin America, and Mexican literature more specifically. We will further discuss borderlands, gender and hybridities and will rethink Southern US identity within a broader Southern geographical landscape that traces networks, common themes and contemporary mobilities. Core Reading: Cisneros, Sandra. “Woman Hollering Creek.” (1991). Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) – Excerpt from this work  Week 13: Revision Day Revision/ Discussion/ Practicing annotation and close-reading Recommended: From the Blackwell Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South (2007) – the chapter titled “Searching for Southern Identity” p 591- 607. Uploaded for you. Ladd, Barbara. “Dismantling the Monolith: Southern Places – Past, Present, and Future.” In South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture. Ed. Suzanne W. Joens and Sharon Monteith. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002.

American South, Race, Gender, Politics, Transgressions, Revisions, Southern Legacy

13-12-2023