Instr:                  Melissa Schoeffel
Office:               CRT 408,   229-6442
e-mail:                mschoeff@uwm.edu
Office hours:     by appointment

Course Information:                   TR   2:05-3:20  AUP 189
 

Course Description

This course will explore the construction of race in American literature--specifically the construction of black and white racial identities.  We will begin with two key nineteenth-century novels by white authors about black-white "race relations"--Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Twain's Huck Finn ("key" because of their longstanding popularity and canonization as well as their influence at the times of their publications).  The twentieth-century novels we will read are all by black authors, which will raise interesting questions about who imagines racial identities and what issues these images raise in the study of literature.  Finally, we'll end with a twenty-first century novel by a newly published author--a white author who finds it crucial to make race an explicit and foundational part of a contemporary American story.

Tentative Book List:
The Ordinary White Boy by Brock Clarke (2001)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
Passing by Nella Larsen (1929)
Paradise by Toni Morrison (1997)
Black No More by George Schuyler (1931)
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885)
Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
Course Reader

Course Policies:

• Because of the importance of attendance and thoughtful, prepared class participation, more than four absences will lower the final grade one notch (for example, from A to A-).  Each subsequent absence will lower the final grade another notch.
• Late papers will be lowered one letter grade.