American Fiction From 1950 To The Present

(Cross-listed as ENG 64) An exploration of the American literary and cultural landscape since World War II. Readings will likely include representative works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, Tim O'Brien, Toni Morrison, Raymond Carver, and others. Recommendations: ENG 1, 2 or Fulfillment of College Writing Requirement. WGSS 0069 Contemporary Multi-Ethnic Literature (Cross-listed as ENG 69) Introductory study of novels, memoirs, plays, film, and visual arts concerned with how various gendered, national, linguistic, and racial identifications impel artists toward forms of aesthetic experimentation. Special attention to the use of fictional narrative to produce alternative histories and to the question of multi-culturalism as understood in the academy. Texts may include: Richard Wright's Black Boy/American Hunger, Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart, Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Chang Rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Maria Helena Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus, and the documentary films Mississippi Triangle and Eyes on the Prize. WGSS 0070 Grimms' Fairy Tales. (Cross-listed as GER 70) The Grimm brothers as nineteenth-century collectors and authors. Folk tale and literary fairy tale; relation to the development of German nationalism and capitalism; role in attitude formation toward gender and social class; assimilation and adaptation in twentieth-century social, political, and economic life under the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, and post-World War II Germany. Significant focus on women's issues. (May be taken at 100 level with consent.)