Sections offered FALL 2023:
#5588
|
GARETH EVANS |
11:30 AM–12:45 PM
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HU 108 |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
READING
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah.
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Hernan Diaz, Trust.
Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch.
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future.
Daniel Woodrell, Winter’s Bone.
NOTE: Please buy physical copies of the books. No e-books allowed.
DESCRIPTION
In this course, we will read six 21st-century American novels. The novels we read vary in style and content, just as the authors vary in their race, ethnicity, gender, regional, and national background. All are concerned with the power of circumstance, however, and with the role difference, of, for example, class, gender, race, color and sexuality, play in shaping a person’s life. The first book we will read is part of the transnational turn that is a key trend in 21st-century American fiction. That book, Americanah, is as much concerned with the country in which its author was born, Nigeria, as it is with the United States. After Adichie, we will read Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. Part road novel, part prison narrative, part family tale, Ward’s novel offers a sometimes mythic account of African-American life. Our next read is Hernan Diaz’s Trust, which tells the story of a 1920s financier from four conflicting points of view. Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is set largely in a rundown section of a town that eerily resembles Notre Dame, Indiana. Taking place in a dilapidated building full of residents down on their luck, the novel rapidly shifts points of view. Kirkus Review has dubbed The Rabbit Hutch “an American Story,” and we will, among other things, attempt to assess the validity of that claim. Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future is a sprawling work of science fiction which focuses on, and hints at a solution for, climate change. We will end the class with a novel about the white working class, Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, a family novel full of love, loyalty, crack, violence, and death. Range of method and content is one key to the class, then. I want us to think, too, however, about the connections between the books we read, our ability to connect, or otherwise, to the characters they portray, the different ways in which the novels explore their characters’ attempts to connect, and the connection between characters and the worlds in which they, and you, live. If you read the books in the way I want you to read them, you will put yourself in the heads of the writers you read, and the people you read about, however different they may be from you.
WRITING REQUIREMENTS
Two essays that are at least 1500 words long. 60% of the final grade. You may revise the first essay you write if it receives a grade below B+. Six blog posts. Three of your responses will comment on a book we are reading, while the other three will respond to two comments made by other students in the class. 30% of your final grade will be based on your Blog responses. The remaining 10% of your grade will be based on class participation.