Faulkner and the South
Week 1
Wednesday, 1/23: explanation of the course's structure; biographical and historical information about Faulkner and the U.S. South; sign-up for presentations
Week 2
Wednesday, 1/30: The Sound and the Fury; presentation of "Time in Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury," by Jean-Paul Sartre (reprinted in Norton edition)
Week 3
Wednesday, 2/6: As I Lay Dying; presentation of "Death, Grief, Analogous Form: As I Lay Dying," Faulkner: The House Divided, by Eric J. Sundquist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 28-43.
Week 4
Wednesday, 2/13: Sanctuary; presentation of " 'Man Enough to Call You Whore': And Daddy Makes Three in Sanctuary," by John N. Duvall. Faulkner's Marginal Couple: Invisible, Outlaw, and Unspeakable Communities (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 59-80.
Week 5
Wednesday, 2/20: Absalom, Absalom!
Week 6
Wednesday, 2/27: Absalom, Absalom!; presentation of " 'Some Trash Myth of Reality's Escape': Romance, History, and Film Viewing in Absalom, Absalom!," by Peter Lurie. American Literature 73:3 (September 2001), 563-97.
Week 7
Wednesday, 3/5: Go Down, Moses; presentation of "Touching Race in Go Down, Moses," by John T. Matthews. New Essays on Go Down, Moses, Linda Wagner-Martin, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 21-47.
Week 8
Wednesday, 3/12: The Hard-Boiled Virgin; presentation of "Southern Women Writers and the Beginning of the Renaissance," by Carol S. Manning, and "Frances Newman," by Miriam J. Shillingsburg. The History of Southern Women's Literature. Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks, eds. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 242-89; 354-58.
Spring Break
Week 11
Wednesday, 4/2: Delta Wedding; presentation of "Gender and History in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding," by Susan V. Donaldson. South Central Review 14:2 (Summer 1997), 3-14.
Week 12
Wednesday, 4/9: Invisible Man; presentation of "To Move Without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellison's Trueblood Episode," by Houston A. Baker, Jr. PMLA 95:5 (October 1983), 828-845.
Week 13
Wednesday, 4/16: The Orchard Keeper; presentation of "Imposition and Resistance in Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper," by Barbara Jane Brickman. The Southern Quarterly 38:2 (Winter 2000), 123-34.
Week 14
Wednesday, 4/23: Song of Solomon; presentation of"Re-Weaving the 'Ulysses Scene': Enchantment, Post-Oedipal Identity, and the Buried Text of Blackness in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon," by Kimberly W. Benston. Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text. Essays from the English Institute. Hortense J. Spillers, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1991), 87-109.
Week 15
Wednesday, 4/30: Beloved; presentation of " 'I made the ink': Identity, Complicity, 60 Million, and More," by Naomi Mandel. Modern Fiction Studies 48:3 (Fall 2002), 581-613.
Week 16
Wednesday, 5/7: A Visitation of Spirits; presentation of "Eloquence and Epitaph: AIDS, Homophobia, and Problematics of Black Masculinity," by Philip Brian Harper. Are We Not Men? Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3-38.
How you will be graded:
