ENGLISH 172E: Literature of the Americas (lecture)

Taught by: Roland Greene and Ramon Saldivar

Winter Quarter, 2012-2013

TTh 11:00-12:30, Room: Art2

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This course offers a wide-ranging overview of the literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North  American, Central American, and South American literatures as well as the distinctive national and cultural elements of a diverse array of primary works. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes—the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, magic realism, Noigandres—in unaccustomed conversation with each other.

This course fulfills the following Major Requirements:

  • Hist. Period: Post 1900
  • Brit. Lit. 1750-1900 or Am. Lit. before 1900
  • Topic: Race and Ethnicity