We the People: American Literatures of Community

The Preamble begins thus: “We the People of the United States ...” How was this “we” conceptualized at the nation’s birth, and how has it changed? How do we imagine and revise the collectivity of the national, racial, cultural, sexual, and social “we” in the 21st century? This course explores what it means to be an individual and inhabit the collective “we” in American literatures that stage the question of the self versus/and/or/with/against/through the communal identity. Some authors include Eugenides, Faulkner, Emerson, O’Brien, Morrison, Chang-rae Lee, Silko, Paul Beatty, Alexis Bechdel, and Craig Santos Perez. No prerequisites.