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CS92PROD
Southern Literature as Migration Studies
ENGL 359
Spring 2012
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: AFAM 358, AMST 359

There is no shortage of critical discourse on the historical experience, and the continuing impact, of American acts of migration; and the South remains a place Americans--and American writers--want in equal measure to abandon and return to. This course will examine literary representations of southern migrants and will use historical and theoretical texts to rehistoricize and retheorize migration. We will consider the figure of the uprooted southerner, ideas of urbanization, and the phenomenon of the Great Migration (alongside the fact that, as Houston Baker has pertly commented, "No matter where you travel, you still be black"). We will also investigate the phenomenon of reverse migration, in which northerners head southward, and its attendant "immersion narratives." How does Southern literature contribute to (or help create) our understanding of migration and of migration studies? How does the experience of migration vary according to class, to race, to gender? What do migration and relocation mean for a people who have been, in Toni Morrison's words, continually "moved around like checkers"?

Essential Capabilities: Interpretation, Writing
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: SeminarGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AMST)
Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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