ENGL 325 - Studies in Genre

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

An In-depth study of specific forms or types of literature, such as satire, humor, gothic fiction, realism, slave narratives, science fiction, crime, romance, adventure, short story, epic, autobiography, hypertext, and screenplay. Each year, one or more of these genres is investigated in depth. The course may cross national borders and historical periods or adhere to boundaries of time and place. Eve Dunbar.

Topic for 2021/22b: Narratives of Enslavement/Narratives of Freedom. While “the slave narrative” is often exclusively associated with Black people enslaved in the American South, in this seminar, we will examine how Black, Indegiounous, and white writers throughout the United States employed the form to make claims on, exclude others from, or critique notions of American citizenship and freedom throughout the 19th century. We will consider how bodies marked as “free” and “unfree” co-create national narratives of freedom and democracy. We will also examine the mobilization of enslavement narratives to deconstruct both genre and form while also tending to how enslavement narratives challenge this nation’s essential promises of inclusion. This course will center on the fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and poetry of writers of color, indigenous, and women. As we close the course, we’ll explore how 19th-century notions of freedom and unfreedom remain central to the American literary and cultural imaginary. Writers may include Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt, Black Hawk, Caroline Lee Hentz, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Wakefield, Harriet Wilson, and others. Eve Dunbar.

This course fulfills the English major Pre-1900 requirement.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS