Samuel Delany’s 1975 novel Dhalgren is an enormous, and enormously complicated, work of science fiction that, by interweaving various forms of prose around (at least partly) the production and reception of a book of poetry, portrays the experiences of a newcomer to a city that is mysteriously cut off from the rest of the world. His 1999 book Times Square Red, Times Square Blue places two long essays side by side – one a personal essay about his experiences as a gay black male through four decades in New York City, one a critical essay about the relationship between the space of the city and the kinds of existence that are made possible by that space.

This quarter, we’ll be reading both of these books and several of Delany’s short stories, along with a number of critical and theoretical texts (including essays or excerpts from Michele de Certeau, Anne Cvetkovich, Walter Benjamin, Michael Warner, Donna Haraway, and others) as we study, discuss, and write about the ways in which the intersections of race, sexuality, trauma, violence, and urban space that occur within the context of Delaney’s works are manifest differently in the different forms that work takes.

This will be a reading-intensive and content-intensive course; students can expect to be assigned approximately 150 pages of reading per week, much of it challenging on the levels of vocabulary, structure, argument, emotion, and ideology. Students who have not taken at least ENGL 111, 121, or 131 may struggle to keep up with the workload.
Assignments will include at least 15 pages of graded writing, with some opportunities for revision based on instructor comments and in-class work.