Spring Teaching: "Theories of Literature and Social Justice"

This spring I'm co-teaching a graduate seminar on Theories of Literature and Social Justice with my colleague Seth Moglen. We designed a new version of the syllabus that takes advantage of our respective areas of expertise. Below is the bare-bones version of the document. 

THEORIES OF LITERATURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

REQUIRED TEXTS

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)

J. M. Coetzee, Foe (1986)

Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008)

Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio (1930s)

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)

Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

RECOMMENDED TEXTS

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course introduces students to theories of literature and social justice. How does the study of literature offer distinctive ways of grappling with questions of social justice? How do literary works reinforce or challenge dominant ideologies? In what ways do literary works provide tools to map exploitative or oppressive social and political formations? How do literary works enable us to imagine freer modes of life and more just and equitable societies? Most of our attention will be focused on theoretical and critical works that provide conceptual tools for thinking about these matters. We will also read some literary texts, from varied historical contexts, in order to provide opportunities to experiment with these interpretive paradigms. Major units will focus on intersectional approaches to: race; class; gender and sexuality; and postcolonial and decolonial thought. 

SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND DISCUSSION 

Thurs. Jan. 26 Introductions – and Bong Joon Ho’s Cinematic Representation of Class and Capitalism in Contemporary South Korea.

Bong Joon Ho, Parasite (2020)

Recommended reading: Nam Lee, Films of Bong Joon Ho, Conclusion: "Parasite – A New Beginning? 

Thurs Feb. 2 British Cultural Materialism: Raymond Williams and Carolyn Kay Steedman.

Raymond Williams’ Mid-century Cultural Manifesto.  Raymond Williams, “Culture Is Ordinary” (1959)

Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman (1986), Intro and Part I (Stories): pp. 5-24.

Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977), Part II, Chapters 4-9: pp. 95-135

Thurs Feb. 9 Fredric Jameson: Literature as Cognitive Mapping & Utopian

Fredric Jameson, “Cognitive Mapping” (1988)

Fredric Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” (1979)

Thurs Feb. 16 Modernism and Economic Inequality: Working-Class and Bourgeois Literary Visions

Tillie Olsen, Yonnondio (1930s/1974)

Robert Frost, “Two Tramps at Mud Time” (1934)

Ezra Pound, “The Garden” (1916)

Claude McKay, “Spring in New Hampshire,” “If We Must Die,” “Joy in the Woods,” “The Barrier,” “The Little Peoples” (1919-1920)

Thurs Feb. 23 Whiteness, Blackness

Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), Preface and Chapters 1-2: v-xiii, 1-59.

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926), Chapter 7

William Carlos Williams, “A Negro Woman” (1955)

Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in 19th-Century America (1997): Intro & Chapter 1

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845): Chapter 1.

Thurs March 2 Theorizing the Implications of Slavery in the U.S.: Hortense Spillers and Christina Sharpe

Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” (1987).

Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016): Chapter 1, pp. 1-22.

Sojourner Truth, “Aren’t I A Woman?” (1851)

Thurs March 9 Literature as Wake Work: Reimagining Early America

Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008)

Thurs March 23 Postcolonial Theory

Gayatri Spivak ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?” 

Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man,” “Signs Taken for Wonders”

Amardeep Singh, "Mimicry and Hybridity in Plain English"

Thurs March 30 Postcolonial Literature

J. M. Coetzee, Foe

Gayatri Spivak, “Theory in the Margins” (essay on Foe)

Thurs April 6 Decolonial Visions and Practices

Mahashweta Devi, “Pterodactyl” (1994), translated by Gayatri Spivak.

Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh, “The Decolonial For: Resurgences, Shifts, and Movements (from On Decoloniality).

Thurs April 13 A Modernist Case Study: Virginia Woolf as Feminist Theorist

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)

Virigina Woolf, Three Guineas, excerpt

Thurs April 20 Queer and Trans Theory and Representation

Douglass Crimp, “Mourning and Militancy” (1989)

Heather Love, Feeling Backward (2009) (introduction)

Grace Lavery, “Egg Theory’s Late Style”

Sherwood Anderson, “Hands” (from Winesburg, Ohio, 1919)

Angelina Weld Grimké, “A Mona Lisa” (1927)

Thurs April 27 Gender and Sexuality in the Literature of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (1928)

Thurs May 4 Theory as Literature/Literature as Theory: Bringing It All Together

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987)

Scholarly activities -- 2022 in Review

Publications

1. I have a chapter in the collection Literary Cultures and Digital Humanities in India. The table of contents for the book is here. It builds on my digital edition of Henry Derozio's writing. The title of the chapter is "Digitizing Derozio: Mapping the Local and the Global Contexts of an Anglo-Indian Poet." 

2. My chapter on Tagore and Yeats was finally published in June 2022. The book where it appeared, Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Re-envisioning, can be found here. The full title of the article is "(Un)Translatable Authorship: Positioning Yeats’ “Preface” and the Poetry of Tagore." 

3. I have a chapter in a Lexington Books volume on Gurinder Chadha. My chapter is called, "Diasporic Crosscurrents: Gurinder Chadha and Mira Nair's Early Documentaries." In Shilpa Bhat, Ed. Diaspora and Cultural Negotiations: The Films of Gurinder Chadha. Lexington Books. Book TOC here 

Talks

January 2022: 

I gave a talk at the MLA for a virtual panel. The topic: "Teaching Digital Humanities at a Time of COVID-19." I talked about teaching my "Decolonizing Digital Humanities" class in the fall of 2020 in this session. The link to the session abstract is here. 

May 2022: 

I gave a talk at the "DH Unbound" conference organized by the Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH). This was a virtual talk called "Race and Quantitative DH: Questions and Provocations." The slides for that talk are here. 

June 2022:

I gave a plenary talk at the ADE Midwest summer workshop focused on the Lehigh English department's Literature and Social Justice initiative. The slides for that talk are here

September 2022: 

I organized a seminar for the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) annual conference, "Thinking Justice Across the Imperial Divide: Narrating Anglo-India." This was a seminar with about fifteen participants, ranging from graduate students to senior Victorian studies scholars. I posted my position statement for the seminar here

November 2022: 

I gave a talk at the American Studies Association, on a digital humanities panel. The title of my talk was "Small Corpora as a Pedagogical Tool: African American Literature." The slides for that talk are here

Digital Projects

I spent a good chunk of my summer in 2022 working on a new digital project, African American Poetry: a Digital Anthology.

Playing with Chat GPT (OpenAI): Write a paper...

 A lot of folks in my networks have been chatting about OpenAI / ChatGPT -- the latest GPT-3 release. Based on the examples I've been seeing, the coherence level has increased dramatically from previous releases, such that I probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a paper that was substantially written by an AI if a student were to submit it. 

Here, for instance is the entirety of the prompt I submitted to ChatGPT:

Write a paper on postcolonial ecocriticism using Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island And here is the text it generated:

Introduction Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island is a novel that explores the intersection of postcolonial ecocriticism and climate change. The novel follows the story of Deen, a Bengali-American antiques dealer, as he embarks on a journey to uncover the truth behind a mysterious gun-shaped island in the Sunderbans. Along the way, Deen encounters a variety of characters who are all affected by the effects of climate change and the legacy of colonialism. Through these characters, Ghosh examines the ways in which postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to understand the current environmental crisis. This paper will explore the themes of postcolonial ecocriticism in Gun Island, with a particular focus on the ways in which Ghosh uses the novel to critique the legacy of colonialism and its effects on the environment. The Legacy of Colonialism One of the major themes of Gun Island is the legacy of colonialism and its effects on the environment. Ghosh uses the novel to explore the ways in which colonialism has shaped the environment of the Sunderbans, a region of India that was once part of the British Empire. Throughout the novel, Ghosh examines the ways in which colonialism has impacted the environment, from the destruction of mangrove forests to the displacement of local communities. He also examines the ways in which colonialism has shaped the current environmental crisis, highlighting the ways in which the legacy of colonialism has contributed to the current climate crisis. Postcolonial Ecocriticism Ghosh uses the novel to explore the concept of postcolonial ecocriticism, which is the idea that the current environmental crisis is inextricably linked to the legacy of colonialism. Throughout the novel, Ghosh examines the ways in which colonialism has shaped the environment of the Sunderbans, highlighting the ways in which the legacy of colonialism has contributed to the current environmental crisis. He also examines the ways in which postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to understand the current environmental crisis, exploring the ways in which the legacy of colonialism has shaped the current environmental crisis and the ways in which postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to address the current environmental crisis. Conclusion In conclusion, Gun Island is a novel that explores the intersection of postcolonial ecocriticism and climate change. Through the story of Deen, Ghosh examines the ways in which colonialism has shaped the environment of the Sunderbans and the ways in which postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to understand the current environmental crisis. The novel serves as a powerful critique of the legacy of colonialism and its effects on the environment, highlighting the ways in which the legacy of colonialism has contributed to the current environmental crisis and the ways in which postcolonial ecocriticism can be used to address the current environmental crisis.

There are clearly still some glitches here -- a student who submitted this as-is would probably not get an 'A' -- and I would have several question marks and "redundant phrasing" comments in the margins. But it's definitely both impressive and a little concerning how good this is.  

Global Cinema: Notes (Introducing Key Terms)

These are from lecture notes for a course I regularly teach called Global Cinema. -AS Key Terms and Ideas:

• Global South
• Developing World
• Postcolonial world
• Third World
• National Cinema
• Star Sytem / Celebrity Culture: Connected to National Cinema
• Academy Awards as a branch of the American National Cinema

 

I should start with a disclaimer: the terminology we’ll be using is an art, not a science.

To begin with, let’s take a stab at defining what we mean by the “Global South,” a phrase I used in the description for this course.  Geographically, we are referring primarily to Africa, Asia, and Latin America -- but, more specifically, regions within those continents that are less economically advanced. Thus, when we say “Global South,” within Asia we are thinking more of South Asia and Southeast Asia, and less of economically developed countries like Japan and South Korea. 

This is a loose geographical and cultural map -- I decided to include Korean cinema in this course even though South Korea is clearly economically highly developed. But the dialogue with western cinema is pretty intense and important in Korean cinema, and our unit on Bong Joon-Ho will line up pretty well with our other units. (It helps that Bong’s films are especially interested in representing the tension between rich and poor within Korean society.)