Mar 29, 2024  
2016-2017 HillBook (Class of 2020) 
    
2016-2017 HillBook (Class of 2020) [ARCHIVED HILL BOOK]

ENG 100/142 - Between Two Worlds: Multicultural Literature and Film (Core/First-Year Seminar)

Three or Four Credits
Fall Semester

In this course we study the work of African American, Native American, Chicana, Asian American, South Asian and Caribbean immigrant artists who explore what it means to live in the United States post-WWII until now. For African American artists the question has often most simply been: what does it mean to be black in America, and-more recently-how do black lives matter? For immigrants it’s a struggle to figure out the old home in relation to the new home, old customs and stories in relation to new ones. For Native Americans it’s often a matter of claiming a presence in a country that considers them little more than mascots.  For Japanese Americans during World War II it’s about figuring out what the “American” means when their entire community is interned because of the “Japanese” part of their heritage. We want to know how writers and filmmakers from these multi-ethnic communities have responded to the questions of navigating a predominantly white world, and negotiating various sites of belonging. We will study novels, short stories, poems, personal essays, a graphic novel, and films by artists such as James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz, Jamaica Kincaid, Julie Otsuka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jessica Abel, Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), Mira Nair (The Namesake), Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet), and Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals).

Prerequisite(s): ENG 142 is a First-Year Seminar and open to First-Year Students only.
 
When offered as ENG 100, for 3-credits, fulfills the Literature Cornerstone Requirement.
When offered as ENG 142, for 4-credits, fulfills the First-Year Seminar and Literature Cornerstone Requirements.