AMST 266
Topics in American Literature: Freedom and Captivity Fall 2016
Division II Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed ENGL 265
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

Letters from prison are as central to American literature as are dreams of freedom. This course explores the persistent concern in American literature and culture with forms of freedom and captivity. How have writers witnessed and imagined the experience of dispossession, displacement, internment, diaspora, and emancipation? The course will be weighted toward the 19th century, but will make constant reference to contemporary works as we explore the American carceral imagination in the shift from a slavery democracy to a penal democracy. This course contributes to the College’s Exploring Diversity Initiative by focusing on how cultures and peoples within American society have interacted and responded to one another in the past. In addition to works by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Lydia Maria Child, Zitcala-Sa, Charles Johnson and Julie Otsuka, we will view contemporary films that represent slavery and emancipation (Twelve Years a Slave, Daughters in the Dust, and the 2016 Birth of a Nation), as well as contemporary visual art in the collection of the Williams College Museum of Art.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1264
Grading: no pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: three 5- to 7-page papers and one 10-page final essay; weekly short responses.
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis
Prerequisites: a 100-level ENGL course, or a score of 5 on the AP English Literature exam, or a score of 6 or 7 on the Higher Level IB English exam
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students, sophomores, and English majors who have yet to take a Gateway course
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ENGL; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under AMST
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 265 Division I AMST 266 Division II
Attributes: AMST Arts in Context Electives
ENGL 200-level Gateway Courses
ENGL Literary Histories B
JLST Interdepartmental Electives

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