Global Literatures in English

Comment here for Beloved.  Since a lot of odd things go on in this novel, and a lot of questions go unanswered until later on, comment with something you’re confused about or unsure of in our first readings here. As we progress through Beloved, I’ll group Morrison with several sets of writers.  We’ll start with […]

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Comment here for Blood Knot.  Maybe a deceptively simple question for this class–which of the two main characters do you find most sympathetic? Incidentally, Blood Knot is currently playing in Manhattan at the Signature Theater.  If there’s real interest I could look into getting the department to defray ticket cost–would anyone be interested in going? […]

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Comment here for our two metafictional stories.  Answer this prompt for either–how much do you trust the story’s narrator? Here’s a picture, incidentally, of the old Ocean City amusement area– Some other writers like ours for this class: Chinese-American Writers (like Kingston): Amy Tan (novelist, major work The Joy Luck Club) David Henry Hwang (playwright, major […]

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Comment here for our poems on identity for next time (though, as we said in class, we’ll spend the first 15 minutes or so finishing up “Howl”).  Here’s our prompt for next time–which of these poems’ speakers seems to have the strongest/weakest sense of identity to you? It may help you to understand the Goodison […]

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Since we’re only working on one poem on Tuesday, I think I’d like to spend a little more time on the Cheever and Oates at the start of class, so be ready for that. Comment here for Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl.”  A little background–Carl Solomon, to whom the poem is dedicated, is a fellow (though more […]

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Let me quickly finish a thought from class.  As I was saying, the difference between monotheistic and polytheistic religions is that, on the one hand, monotheistic religions are better at promoting benevolence amongst large groups of people who belong to the religion, which polytheistic religions, which tend to be more localized, don’t do as well; […]

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Comment here for the second half of Things Fall Apart.  Think about this for next time–what strikes you as most different about the second half of the novel from the first? Incidentally, obviously our reading for this semester, given the breadth it has to cover, has to be representative about its texts.  Of course, there […]

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Comment here for our first reading.  Here’s our first prompt–Achebe, defending his use of English, wrote “‘And let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English for we intend to do unheard of things with it.”  As I suggested in class, you’ll probably find Achebe’s use of English slightly strange.  See […]

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