Faculty First Year Seminars 191ENGL1 - Language, Lit, and Resistance

"Language, Literature, and Resistance This course examines the roles of language and resistance in the development of the ideas, concerns, and preoccupations of African American authors as expressed in various, multi-genre literary pronouncements. By doing so, this course allows students to assess the values and aesthetics that are not only representative of African American literature, but that also define the historical context from which the literature emerges. This opportunity will enable students not only to better engage artistic works produced during particular historical moments of challenge, but also to think elastically about how creative forms of expression in our contemporary moment endorse or resist structures of oppression. Thus, this course?s orientation to imagination and literature relative to the critical engagement with language and history will serve as a meaningful introduction to what it means to be a student at UMass, Amherst.

First-year (R1ST)