Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0140 - Contemporary Women's Fiction

This is an interdisciplinary seminar that introduces the diverse concerns of contemporary literature, criticism and theory written by a selection of black women throughout the African Diaspora. Students in this course will learn to think and write about meanings, which have become naturalized in practice and ideology as narrative events and how our texts think through/beyond those taxonomies of power, coercion and abridgment in order to neutralize them. The texts are loosely linked in these categories: exile and diaspora; memory as a form of resistance; the depiction of public and private traumas; focalization and narrative structure; and history and historical representation. This course requires mandatory weekly discussion board posts, frequent short writing assignments, independent and collaborative work, and active class participation. Students will also utilize digital research methods and tools to gain deeper understanding of the literature and its context. Critical essays by bell hooks, Hazel Carby, Patricia Hill Collins, Mae Henderson and Hortense Spillers will supplement the in-class and online work. Authors will include but are not limited to Edwidge Danticat, Octavia Butler, Michelle Cliff, Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde.

Arts, Design, and Media Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives Independent Work Students are expected to spend 8 hours weekly in preparation and work outside of class time.