The bond laborers, from Africa and Europe, rose up together to challenge the engrossment of the land as well as their own terms of servitude, which had been extended by the planters. In this course we will read American texts in the light of this historical development. Theoretical books we will read are Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark , and Theodore Allen's The Invention of the White Race . Among the imaginative writers we will read are Poe, Melville, Twain, Cather, Sinclair Lewis, DuBois, Alice Childress, Langston Hughes, E.L. Doctorow, Thomas Pynchon, and Dorothy Allison. Most of the readings will be short, although we will read several novels in their entirety.
Requirements are weekly response papers, and one ten-page analysis at the end.