ENGL 313
Writing Love in the African Diaspora Spring 2013
Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed AFR 321 / COMP 304 / WGSS 304
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course explores how various forms of love are imagined in contemporary writing of the African Diaspora. From parent-child affections, to heterosexual romance, to queer intimacies, to the love between friends, “love” is a central theme in literature and a crucial part of how we define humanity. Exploring texts such as Junot Diaz’s This is How you Lose Her, Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Dee Rees’s Pariah, and Toni Morrison’s Love, we will consider how various forms of intimacy are written and read in the African Diaspora. We will read these works alongside theoretical and critical texts in black feminism, sexuality studies, affect theory and queer theory to consider several questions: What do literary love relationships reveal about cultural notions of gender, sexuality, class, and spirituality? How are intimacy and human connection evoked differently through Diasporic modernist, magical realist, and postmodernist literary techniques? How do processes of enslavement, colonization, migration, and war shape how love is imagined in Afrodiasporic literature?
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 20
Expected: 15
Class#: 3472
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: two short (3-4-page) papers, one longer (7-10-page) final paper, a final presentation, and regular contributions to class discussions; students will have the option to fulfill the presentation requirements with creative work
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the Gaudino option
Prerequisites: Some coursework in WGSS, AFR, ENGL or COMP
Enrollment Preferences: WGSS, AFR, ENGL, COMP majors/concentrators
Distributions: Division I Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under WGSS or AFR; meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ENGL or COMP
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 313 Division I AFR 321 Division II COMP 304 Division I WGSS 304 Division II

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