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COURSE CODE: AN33000BA10
AN3306OMA
FAll 2015
From Multiculturalism to Transnationalism: A Literary Survey
Course designation: American Literature 4
Time & Place: Thu 12. 00 - 13. 40, Rm 119
Instructor: Lenke Németh
Email: nemeth.lenke@arts.unideb.hu
Office Hours: Wed 12:00 – 13:00, Thu
11:00 – 11:50, Rm 118 Mbl, Tel.: 512
900/22069
COURSE SYNOPSIS
This course offers a comparative approach to the close study of literary works—as
well as a film adaptation—that are representative of two significantly different phases
in American cultural history, multiculturalism and transnationalism. While the former
dates back roughly to the period from 1960s to 1990s, the latter cultural pattern has
evolved over the past two decades as a result of the increased immigration in the US
triggered by globalized industrialization.
This multi-genre course aims to trace and study the constantly changing concept of
what constitutes “Americanness” as addressed in a wide range of contemporary
works. Students will be sensitized not only to a paradigm shift perceptible in
American culture but also to the emergence of a new generation of authors who have
revitalized the American literature in terms of form and theme. Additionally, students
will have a clear understanding of a new pattern of cultural identity evolving in the
US at present.
Authors selected for the course include African American Alice Walker (1944-),
Suzan-Lori Parks (1968-), Asian American David Henry Hwang (1957-), Indian-born
American Bharati Mukharjee, Chicana Cherri Moraga (1952-), Sandra Cisneros
(1954-), Mexican American Helena Maria Viramontes (1954-), Dominican American
Junot Diaz (1968-), and Filipino American Zamora R. Linmark, Native American
Sherman Alexie.
METHOD OF TEACHING
The course will be taught in a seminar format where the class time is devoted to the
discussion of the texts on the agenda as well as of the critical works that will be
assigned during the orientation class.
ASSESSMENT
Active participation and attendance are required.
Writing Assignments
[1] Midterm test: it will check students’ familiarity with the texts, their contexts, and
the critical studies discussed up to that point in the semester.
[2] Take-home essay: an analytical essay that addresses one of the issues discussed or
raised in the seminar. Format: 8-10 pages, 2,5 cm margins, Times New Roman 12 pt,
double spaced, full and correct citation, alphabetical works cited (MLA Style),
fastened, with student’s name on each page.
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In-class presentation: a 5-10-minute talk on a critical or a theoretical essay related to
the work on the agenda. It should serve as a good starting point for the discussion of
the relevant work of art. Students are strongly advised to speak without notes as mush
as possible.
Evaluation Criteria:
Participation: 20%
Presentation: 20 %
Midterm test: 30 %
Take-home essay: 30 %
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
(1) Sep17 Orientation
Introduction.
(2) Sep 24
African- American
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973) “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.”
(1984) (E)
Topics: roots, ancestry
(3) Oct 1
Chicana
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1983)
Topics: Chicana subjectivity, patriarchy
(4) Oct 8
South-Asian
Bharati Mukharjee, “A Wife’s Story” (1988) (E)
Topics: home, female roles, femininity, agency
(5) Oct 15
Asian-American
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly (1988)
Topics: deconstruction of stereotypes, orientalism
(6) Oct 22
Chicana
Sandra Cisneros, “Never Marry a Mexican,” “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991),
(E)
Topics: border state, liminality, clash of cultures
Oct 29 CONSULTATION
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(7) Nov 5
MIDTERM PAPER
(8) Nov 12
Mexican American
Helena Maria Viramontes, “The Cariboo Cafe” (1983) (18 pp), “The Moths” (8 p)
Topic: home, shifting point of view narration technique
(9) Nov 19
Native American
Sherman Alexie, “Every Little Hurricane,” "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix,
Arizona" (1993) (E)
(10) Nov 26
Screening of Smoke Signals, dir. Chis Eyre, 1998
(11) Dec 3
Dominican American
Junot Diaz, “Drown” (1996), “Aguantando” (E)
Topics: poverty, migration
(12) Dec 10
Filipino American
Linmark R. Zamora, “The Two Phillipinos,” “Tongue-Tied” (1995) (E)
Topics: Otherness, Creole and Pidgin Englishes
ESSAY DUE: DECEMBER 13th (electronically)
(13) Dec 17
Closing
Required reading
The course material is available either in print format or electronically (marked E) in
the Institute library.
BIBLIOGRAPHY SUGGESTED
BOOKS
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Anzaldúa, Gloria. La Frontera/Borderlands: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt
Lute P, 1987.
Brater, Enoch, ed. Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights. Oxford, OUP,
1989.
Brater, Enoch and Ruby Cohn, eds. Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and
Postmodern Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1990.
Cisneros, Sandra. “Never Marry a Mexican.” Woman Hollering Creek and Other
Stories. New York: Random House, 1991.
Christian, Barbara: Women Writers: Texts and Contexts. Rutgers UP,
Diaz, Junot. Drown. London: Faber, 1997.
---. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. London: Faber, 2008.
Fisher, Dexter, ed. The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers of the United States.
Boston: Houghton, 1980.
Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism.
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.
Garner, Stanton. B. Jr. Phenomelogy and Performance in Contemporary Drama.
Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.
Huerta, Jorge. Chicano Drama: Performance, Society and Myth. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000.
Jenckes, Norma, ed. New Readings in American Drama: Something’s Happening
Here. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.
Geis, Deborah R. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American
Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1993. *
Madsen, Deborah L. Understanding Contemporary Chicana Literature. Columbia: U
of South Carolina, 2000.
Manzanas, Ana Maria, ed. Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line.
Critical Approaches to Ethnic American Literature, no. Amsterdam, Rodopi,
2007.
Mukharjee, Bharate. “A Wife’s Story.” The Middleman and Other Stories. Grove P,
1999.
Ozieblo, Barbara and María Dolores Narbona-Carrión, eds. Codifying the National
Self: Spectators, Actors and the Dramatic Text. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.
Schmidt, Kerstin. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American
Drama. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005
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Viramontes, Helena Maria. The Moths and Other Stories. Houston: Arte Publico P,
1995.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Christian, Women Writers. 23-39.
---. “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Christian, Women Writers. 39-51.
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES
Bertram D Ashe, “A New Foreword” in Trey Ellis’s Platitudes. Northeastern UP,
2003. vii-3
Abramson, Myka-Tucker. “The Money Shoot: Economies of Sex, Guns, and
Language in Topdog/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 78-97.
Brady, Mary Pat. “The Contrapuntal Geographies of Woman Hollering Creek and
Other Stories.” American Literature 71.1 (1999):117-50.
Carbonell, Ana María. “From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by
Viramontes and Cisneros.” MELUS 24.2.(1999):19-29.
Davies, G. Roco. “Have Come. Are Here: Reading Filipino/a American Literature.”
MELUS 29.1 (2004): 5-18.
Deeney, John J. “Of Monkeys and Butterflies: Transformation in M.H. Kingston’s
Tripmaster Monkey and D. H. Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” MELUS 18.4
(1993):21-41.
Doyle, Jacquelyn. “More Room of her Own: Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango
Street.” MELUS 19.4 (1994): 5-35.
Ellis, Trey. “The New Black Aesthetic.” Callalo 38 (1989): 233-43.
Ganz, Robin. “Sandra Cisneros: Border Crossings and Beyond.” MELUS 19.1
(1994):19-29.
Irmscher, Christoph. “’The Absolute Power of a Man’? Staging Masculinity in Giacomo
Puccini and David Henry Hwang.” American Studies Quarterly 42. 4 (1998): 619-29.
Lauretis, de Teresa. “Popular Culture, Public and Private Fantasies: Femininity and
Fetishism in David Cronenberg’s ‘M. Butterfly.’” Signs 24. 2(1999): 303-34.
Moore, Deborah Owen. “La Llorona Dines at the Cariboo Café: Structure and
Legend in the Work of Helena María Viramontes.” Studies in Short Fiction 35
(1998). 277-86.
Nubla, Gladys. “The Politics of Relations: “Creole Languages in “Dogeaters” and
“Rolling the R’s” MELUS 29.1 (2004):199-218.
Remen, Kathryn. “The Theater of Punishment: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
and Michael Foucalt’s Discipline and Punish.” Modern Drama 37. 3 (1994):
391-400.
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Reyes, Eric Estuar. “American Developmentalism and Hierarchies of Difference in R.
Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's” Journal of Asian American Studies 10. 2
2007. 117-140.
Rossini, D. Jon. “The Contemporary Ethics of Violence:. Cruz, Solis and Homeland
Security.”
Saaal, Ilka. “Performance and Perception: Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in David Henry
Hwang’s M. Butterfly.” American Studies 42.4 (1998): 629- 45.
Tucker-Abramson, Myka. “The Money Shot: Economies of Sex, Guns and Language
in Topdog/Underdog.” Modern Drama 50.1 (2007): 77-97.
Shin, Andrew. “Projected Bodies in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and Golden
Gate.” MELUS 27.1(2002): 177-99.