Authors include Brown, Douglass, Hopkins, Chesnutt, Du Bois, Toomer, Hurston, Hughes, Fisher, McKay, West, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Petry, Morrison, Wideman, Bambara, Gaines, McPherson, Walker, Naylor, Delaney, and Butler. Examines the changing understandings of the sea and coastlines in Western cultures. Particular attention is given to the fashioning of the beach as a space of health, leisure, and tourism, as well as the tensions between tourism and other economic activities centered around the sea. Materials examined include paintings, literature, and folklore.
Class includes local on-site visits.
Readings include recent literature on the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of museum display. Scheduled spring semester exhibits at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art serve as primary resources for the class. Discusses English fiction and nonfiction by South Asian writers, primarily in independent India and Pakistan, examining representations of nation and nationalism, multicultural conflict and cohesion, transformations of the family and gender roles, poverty, and the challenges of personal independence and obligation. Considers the political and literary consequences of writing in the language of colonization. Authors may include Tagore, Markandaya, Narayan, Desai, Rushdie, Mistry, Suleri, and Roy.