Fall 2024 - ENGL 210 D100
Reading and Writing Identities (3)
Class Number: 4642
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Sep 4 – Dec 3, 2024: Thu, 12:30–2:20 p.m.
Burnaby -
Exam Times + Location:
Dec 15, 2024
Sun, 12:00–3:00 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Jon Smith
jon_smith@sfu.ca
1 778 782-4512
Office: AQ 6117
Office Hours: Th 2:25-4:25
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Prerequisites:
12 units or one 100-division English course.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Considers how identity - construed psychologically, culturally, or socially - is performed and interrogated through literature and language. May be further organized by historical period, genre, or critical approach. Breadth-Humanities.
COURSE DETAILS:
NOTE: Students who took the Fall 2021 version of ENGL 349 are encouraged NOT to take this section of ENGL 210 for credit.
Particularly since 2012, African American essayists, novelists, and perhaps most of all poets have forged what is widely considered the most powerful and formally innovative body of literature in contemporary North America. However, just as the current period of racist backlash that helped spur that work is the result of more than four centuries of North American, European, and African history, the present literary boom grows from a literary history nearly as complex. We’ll put it in that literary-historical context, with special attention to the emerging African American critical concepts of “Black patience,” “Black time,” and “plantation modernity,” along with attendant attention to (among other dominant and emergent critical terms) Afrofuturism, Afrosurrealism, a “blues epistemology,” and other generic and critical constructs, to understand where we are and how we got here. We’ll also ask some basic but difficult questions: what is, or was, African American literature? How variously does such literature position itself in regional, national, and diasporic contexts? Who’s the audience? How much of one’s poetic, novelistic, or essayistic voice does one decide to bring from Black culture, how much from other wellsprings?
Grading
- First paper )3-4pp) 20%
- Poem presentation 15%
- Second paper (5-6pp) 25%
- Tutorial 15%
- Final Exam 25%
Materials
REQUIRED READING:
Ta-nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
ISBN: 978-1925240702
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
ISBN: 978-1501126079
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
ISBN: 978-1555976903
Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin
ISBN: 978-0143133186
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Department Undergraduate Notes:
IMPORTANT NOTE Re 300 and 400 level courses: 75% of spaces in 300 level English courses, and 100% of spaces in 400 level English courses, are reserved for declared English Major, Minor, Extended Minor, Joint Major, and Honours students only, until open enrollment begins.
For all On-Campus Courses, please note the following:
- To receive credit for the course, students must complete all requirements.
- Tutorials/Seminars WILL be held the first week of classes.
- When choosing your schedule, remember to check "Show lab/tutorial sections" to see all Lecture/Seminar/Tutorial times required.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html
RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION
Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.