Literary texts offer modes through which writers and readers experience and understand what is outside
the U.S., especially through the seeming confines of generic and formal conventions. In this course, we
will read and write about literature that challenges and builds the coherence of “U.S. Literature” in
ways that are dependent on what is foreign to it. In particular, our readings include literature by
foreign figures writing in and from the U.S, but whose work reflects and refracts difference (racial,
sexual, and otherwise), and in doing so, negotiates the requirements for inclusion in the nation.



These big questions will be brought into sharper focus through our concentrated study of the the
relationship between the U.S. and literature. We will ask after what is means to be included in the
canon of U.S. literature, and what is lost and gained in grouping literary texts according to
nationality, especially when many of the writers we will read are considered or consider themselves part
of a diaspora.

Since this is a “W” course, reading tasks will be coupled with a good deal of writing, workshopping your
writing, and responding to classmates’ writing. Much of the course will be given to practicing close
reading techniques and constructing well argued, engaging literary analyses. Assignments will include
weekly blog posts and responses, a few short papers, and two longer, 5–7 page essays.

Readings will include texts by Frank Norris, Anzia Yezierska, Carlos Bulosan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and
Junot Diaz, as well as excerpts from critical and secondary work.