It' s helping me see the limits of organizing everything around American material, and now I'd like to add more transatlantic connections to my courses. Those courses include American Literature at the Turn of the 20th Century and American Women Writers, 1820-1930. Johns and Needham are also expanding their teaching repertoires. A specialist in African American literature and American studies, Johns will teach a new course, Humor and 20th-Century African American Literature this spring. She's also developing an intermediate-level course tentatively titled Ethnic and Racial Identity through Modes of American Humor.
People tend to have 'common-sense assumptions' about racial identity and characteristics.
What makes racial humor interesting is that the jokes tend to bring what seem like common-sense notions into relief. By toying with these stereotypes, the humorists show us that our assumptions aren't necessarily correct. Needham, who specializes in Anglophone literature of the Third World and postcolonial theory, is developing an as-yet untitled course on literature that examines the slave trade and transatlantic passage of commodities, as well as the contexts that informed and influenced these events. But in one of my courses, Western Representations of the Colonized Subjects, I teach the classic texts of Empire. Developing curriculum is an important component of the Mellon program, but the three mentors also work to help Boulukos with his teaching.