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Summer 2025 Course Offerings

ENGL 670-201 Studies in LIT: Monsters and Memories: Gothic Literature of the African Diaspora
Professor: Abdur-Rahman
Meetings: Summer Session II June 16-July 17
Mondays -Online Independent & Collaborative Activities & Virtual Student Hours
Tuesdays & Thursdays – Zoom Meeting 5-7:45pm
Fridays -Online Independent & Collaborative Activities
Note: There are no in-person meetings on campus.

This course centers the Afro-Gothic as “a cogent frame through which to consider how black creators reckon with—and at times lean into—the ever-presence of death, unalleviated grief, and fear of the dark” (Cooksey and Thomas, 2022). The course problematizes the uses of Blackness/Africanness in gothic literature and explores how black creators invert and revise concepts of darkness, evil and monsters. We will discuss works by W.E.B Du Bois, Harriet Jacobs, Toni Morrison, Clarence Majors, Mohale Mashigo and Tananarive Due. We will also study the presence of Afro-Gothic aesthetics in contemporary film and music.

ENGL 670-301 Studies in LIT: Literature of Witness
Professor: Neuman
Meetings: Summer Session III July 21-August 21

Online Synchronous 6-8pm the following days:
Tuesday July 22
Thursday July 24
Tuesday July 29
Thursday July 31
Tuesday August 5
Thursday August 7
Tuesday August 12
Tuesday August 19

The other days are asynchronous.

Literature of Witness:
We’ll be focusing on novels and books of poetry that are constellated around the idea of witness – acts of witness, ethics of witness. One investigation central to our reading is the extent to which acts of witness are crucial to how we understand subjectivity in contemporary lit. Another question has to do with how witness is imagined, a kind of ethics of witness. Another set of questions lies around the uses of language itself in order to witness, and what language must do in order to “hold” collective and historical traumas. In addition to reading the books below and writing some short, informal (but precise!) response papers, you’ll also have the opportunity to develop your own question around witness and investigate it in your final project this summer.  Course texts will include Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Well Then There Now by Juliana Spahr, and others.
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