School of English - AUTh

Description

This course examines literary works by writers of the American South produced during the 20th century. The study of Southern literature has traditionally emphasized a sense of community and one’s role within it, the importance of religion as a criterion for belonging, and of course a history defined by the claims of race, gender, land, dialect and ownership. Recent critical thinking on Southern studies has sought to challenge these conventional tropes and approaches and reimagine a more geographically and ideologically expansive “South” or “Souths.” Students will be encouraged to appreciate the literary legacy of Southern writers such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and Harper Lee. Emphasis will be placed on these writers’ treatment of social, political and philosophical questions in literary works shaped by gothic elements, where physical and psychological violence proliferate, and where acts of boundary transgression intimate the need for transformation and change.

This course is NOT available to students who have already successfully completed G-LSUD4 AmLit476 “Southern Studies”

Learning Outcomes

• The study of writers of the American South whose work was produced during the 20th century
• An understanding of the historical and social circumstances that formed the backdrop for Southern literary production during the 20th century
• A critical appraisal of Southern writers’ literary legacy and their impact on current redefinitions of a more geographically and ideologically expansive “South” or “Souths”  

Assessment: Final exam (written)

Teaching