Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Investigates and theorizes the relation of literature and media (manuscript, print, visual, aural, electronic, and/or oral) within their cultural and/or performative contexts. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Students with credit for ENGL 484 may not take this course for further credit. Students who obtained credit for English 484W prior to Summer 2015 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Representin(g) the South
“The South”—the U.S. South—stands on perhaps the most contested representational terrain in North America. Is there a distinctive “South,” characterized by (depending on whom you ask) backwardness, racism, folksy foodways, a Sense of Place and Community, “authenticity,” and really, really good music, from Louis Armstrong and the Carter Family to Johnny Cash and OutKast? Or is the South—as international observers less invested in American awesomeness are more likely to see it—typical of the United States (and, as some black Canadian scholars have argued, our nation, too)? Conversely, is there one South or such a multitude of Souths, from Appalachia to New Orleans, that claims of distinctiveness are nonsensical? What's the relation between fandom and identity?  How and why does anyone get from possessing cultural capital (knowing you’re not supposed to put sugar on your grits or when to say “all y’all” or what “bless your heart” really means) to grounding their “identity” in that capital?  What’s the appeal of what Freud called the narcissism of small differences? And why on Earth does anybody care? In this class, we’ll analyze influential representations of “the South” in a wide variety of media: literature, film, television, photography, painting, pop music, food, fashion, and the lifestyle industry (glossy magazines and websites that market to people who identify as “southern”). We’ll also read what to my mind is some of the most interesting (least predictable) scholarship in North American studies, as well as—for seasoning and for context—a little of what I take to be some of the worst. NOTE: the first assignment is an ungraded in-class essay on what you think you know, and like and dislike, about the U.S. South: politics, culture, boundaries, history, what have you. Start thinking about that now, because I will use what I learn about you from your essays to tailor the final nine weeks of the course.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

If you and I both do the work expected of us, you’ll emerge from this course with
·      An understanding of the main issues at stake in contemporary scholarship on “the South”
·      A much stronger ability to apply your English-major skills of close and attentive reading to media well beyond literature
·      An understanding of how media representations shape and are shaped by concepts of “identity”—both identities we avow and those we disavow
·      An understanding of new notions of modernity beyond the old “modernity vs. postmodernity” question, from James Peacock’s “grounded globalism” to Zandria Robinson’s “country cosmopolitanism”

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: