Since the end of the semester is only two weeks away - and I really should be studying or reading or sleeping - the course list for next semester is already online, for English anyway.

I do not have to take any more English classes, but I should, to deepen my knowledge and to prepare for my thesis and examinations in a couple of years. (Just the thought of those two is pretty damn scary!) So I checked out which literature classes will be offered, and I am considering three classes. I will not take any more linguistics (I am glad to be done with that), and some literature classes are cross-listed with cultural studies, so it has a bit of both (I really love to learn about the cultural background of literature).

The three classes are two Proseminar II (Hauptstudium), and one Hauptseminar (Hauptstudium), so they are advanced but since I will not have to write any papers, just do the reading and participate, I do not expect them to be too heavy a workload.

1. Border Theories
2. American Identities in Transit: Race, Ethnicity, and Global Networks in the 20th Century
3. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead — Migrating Bodies and Cultures in the Americas

The first two would basically provide me with a theoretical background of what I want to focus on in my studies, and while theory can be a bit boring, I took a class with the teacher who will teach both of them this semester, and it has been a pretty good and interesting class. I am not too fond of theory, but I cannot avoid it alltogether. The third is actually Native American Literature, but since I found that very interesting at OU as well, it does fit into my studies and interests. Minority literature generally is really interesting to me. And Sheela wants to take this class so after four years we would finally be in a class together again.
I will post detailed descriptions of the courses at the end of this post.

But since the Spanish course list has not been published yet, I have to wait for that to come out. I hope they will do that soon, since I like to have my schedule all mapped out far in advance. Since I do actually still have to take quite a few classes for that major, they would be higher up on my priority list, though personally I prefer American Lit. I want to take Italian 3 if I can fit it into my schedule (it is 8 hours a week, so quite likely that it will overlap with something else. I also need/want to take two Hauptseminar Spanish Lit (or one, if I cannot find two that sound interesting). I have a total of four classes left to take after this semester, though three are Hauptseminar (graduate level classes, two Spanish Lit, one Italian Lit), so I do not want to take too many at a time.

All this of course, assuming I pass all my finals this semester and finally write those freaking term papers. There are three of them, two of which I would like to have finished by mid-March, and the third by the time classes start again in mid-April. I am such a procrastinator when it comes to writing papers. I have already decided on topics for all three of them though, so that’s something, right? And I have done most of the research for one of them, and started writing it, but right now I need to focus on my finals.

By the way, I have compiled a list of classes I have taked so far for my two majors, if you are interested, you can read it here. It is password-protected, and the password is the same as always.

Anyway, here are the descriptions of the three American Lit classes that I am considering for the summer 2007 semester.

1. Border theories

In recent years, the focus of critical attention has gradually shifted from canonical literatures and stable identities toward peripheral cultural products and the general question how borders are depicted across various disciplines. More and more, the politics of borderlands, frontiers, and marginal spaces have become the center of attention. In a globalized world, the crossing of borders has become a quintessential act, and this is why border studies represent some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century.
In this course, we will concern ourselves with the fundamental question of how borders are theoretically conceptualized. A border can be both real and imaginary, a highly fortified line of steel and concrete, and a metaphorical divide between self and other. Thus, borders can exist between nations, sexualities, identities, and peoples. To map this territory, we will look at theoretical texts on the genesis of the nation state, postcolonialism, gender studies, and migration. As a point of departure, the course will primarily focus on the birthplace of border theory, the U.S.-Mexico border.

2. American Identities in Transit: Race, Ethnicity, and Global Networks in the 20th Century

In his most recent book Who are We? (2004), Samuel Huntington has identified the migratory movement from Latin America to the United States as the “most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity”. Huntington confesses a deep unease about the current status quo: “Continuation of this large immigration (without improved assimilation) could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures.” Huntington’s position exemplifies a shift from the paradigms of diasporic identities and multicultural desires towards a “clash of civilizations” in immigration politics. It also illustrates that issues of migration have been at the core of the American understanding of “Self” and “Other.” This course will trace the cultural and historical impact of immigration to the United States from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. The focus will be on issues of assimilation, pluralism, and transnationalism. This course will attempt to posit a transnational paradigm against views in which cultures oppose each other as monolithic units. For this purpose, we will analyze the immigrant literature and the history of immigration to the U.S. from the vantage point of various ethnic experiences (Asian-, Hispanic-, and African-American) in the 20th century, including a variety of movies and representations from popular culture illustrating these themes.

3. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead — Migrating Bodies and Cultures in the Americas

The publication of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991) does not merely accidentally coincide with the five-hundred-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas. Following upon her celebrated novel Ceremony (1977) and her montage of fact and fiction in Storyteller (1981), Almanac of the Dead is characterized by a new level of complexity, depicting a heteroglossic, pan-tribal fictional contact zone of cultures and peoples. It maps out the horrors of global economic parasitism – the trade in bodies, labor, organs, and sexualities, for example – in the context of vampire colonialism, capitalism, and globalization.

To depict the socio-political and cultural history of indigenous peoples and contemporary society as well, Silko overlays her narrative with a multiplicity of theories, ranging from Freud to Marx, from traditional animism to techno-fetishism. Further, the texts and illustrations of the traditional Maya codices provide a historical and post-historical intertext, a palimpsest of consciousness spanning time and space in an unending cycle of history. Through the excruciating narration of her vision of the effect of global capitalism and colonialism on the indigenous peoples of America and Africa, as well as the environment, Silko intends to disrupt the cycle of global economies of destruction, with the narration of the past enabling the future in a revolutionary recycling of history.

Together we will explore the many levels of fictional, theoretical, and historical complexity in Silko’s vision of the destruction and potential restoration of nationhood and community.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 1:16 and is filed under School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.