Ever since Toni Morrison has pointed out how absolutely central the concept of race and the presence of racial difference is in American literature, the black presence and the persistence of whiteness in American culture have been repeated subjects for inquiry. In this seminar we will only have a brief look at how whiteness is invoked in the white American canon and a more extended look at how writers of color – among them Morrison herself -- have treated whiteness in their fictions and their essays. In these writings, whiteness crystallizes as a social, aesthetic, and political norm and a destructive ideological structure that leaves nothing and nobody untouched. The objective of the class is to understand how whiteness works as a partially invisible principle undergirding desires, value systems and actions.
Reading:
- Excerpts from Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe (Moodle)
- Kate Chopin – “Désirée’s Baby”
- Nella Larsen – Passing
- Excerpts and Essays from James Baldwin (Moodle)
- Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye and Essays
- Colson Whitehead – The Intuitionist
- Ta-Nehisi Coates – Between the World and Me
Support:
There will be a Moodle site with information and links. You will receive access to this site in April through the email with which you registered in Agnes.
Requirements:
As "spezielle Arbeitsleitung" students will prepare and introduce handouts on essayistic or theoretical approaches to whiteness. As a MAP for Module 5, you will have to write a term paper related to one of your seminars.
Please register through Agnes |
