ENG-456 Comparative Ethnicities

GER: WC (World Cultures)
Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar
Emphasis on a comparative approach to Asian American, Jewish American, Native American, African American, Caribbean, US-Latino, and Chicano literatures. Focus will be on how writers of color address histories of ambivalent citizenship; how the immigrant experience and the return home changes both America and the world; the problematic concept of America itself, always seemingly at battle with itself. Some of the rhetorical battles waged over the meaning of an American national and hemispheric identity in the works of Gish Jen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sherman Alexie, Cristina Garcia, Junot Diaz, Philip Roth, and Edwidge Danticat, among others. 4 credits.