ENG 31 — Introduction to African American Literature and Culture
Semester
Spring
Year offered
2022
Teaching
ENG 118/ PHIL Literature and Philosophy
SemesterSpringYear offered2022The history of ideas in the Western tradition has from its inception hosted a dynamic relationship between literature and philosophy. This course traces the genealogy of the relationship between literature and philosophy, as well as their intersections, tensions, affinities, and inter-textuality. How do literature and philosophy, in similar and different ways, explain and interrogate the human condition and the category of the human being? Why do literary objects fit well in the explication of philosophy? How does philosophy inhabit and bring meaning to literary worlds? Where do we place poetic philosophers and philosophical novels or poems in the literature and philosophy discussion? Readings range from ancient philosophy and epic poetry to contemporary philosophy and literature, leading students to familiarity with important formations connected to antiquity, and the medieval, renaissance, enlightenment, romanticist, and modern periods.
Writing
- Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies
- Sculpting a Human Being: James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, and the Police in Denmark
- California, the Beautiful, Or, Why the Killing and Incarceration of African Americans Won’t Budge the Ballot
- Post-Homeric Odysseys: Reimagining the Fictional Space Between Human Rights Advocates and the Poor, Dehumanized and Uprooted
- “Quiet as It’s Kept: Baldwin and the Question of Privacy”
- “Global Human Rights and Literature: Imagining a Cosmopolitan Community of Individuals”
