Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there... (William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!)
The course is to introduce students to the Southern literary tradition. It will focus on the central cultural and historical aspects of the American South, from antebellum plantation life, based on the institution of slavery, and the conflicts, myths and codes generated by this period of Southern history, to the modern South.
The texts chosen reflect the richness of the Southern literary tradition and introduce you to some of America's finest authors.
Background material on the South and Southern Literature
Veronica Makowski, What Is Southern Literature and Wikipedia
Background material from George B. Tindall and David Shi, America, 1989 "The Old South: An American Tragedy".
I. The Old South: Antebellum Society, Civil War and Reconstruction.
Photos by O'Sullivan from the Civil War.
MarkTwain, From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (1884)
Kate Chopin, "Désirče's Baby" (1894)
William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" (1934)
William Faulkner reading his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Film Barn Burning dir. by Peter Warner (1980) based on a story by William Faulkner
II. The South in the 20th Century.
Dorothea Lange. Plantation overseer.
The White Community Before the 1960s.
Eudora Welty, "Petrified Man" (1941)
The Black Community Before the 1960s
From Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
Langston Hughes, "I too" (1926) Hear Hughes read aloud his poem
The Civil Rights Movement
Rosa Parks
Eudora Welty: "Where is the Voice Coming From" (1963)
Film: Mississippi Burning dir. by Alan Parker 1988
Keeping Cold Cases Burning About reporter Jerry Mitchell who has been working for years on racial crimes in the South.
Alice Walker, "Elethia" (1971)
The New South
Canal Street, New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina hit
Bobbie Ann Mason, "Shiloh" (1982)
James Lee Burke, "Jesus Out to Sea" (2007) See and hear James Lee Burke discuss his new book on YouTube
Translation exercise: Fra slavepige til Pręsidentfrue
Essay on "The Appropriation of Cultures" (1996) by Percival Everett