English 200: Reading Literary Forms
Instructor: Gust Burns
autumn 2023 / Section A
Download and Print syllabus, and bring it to the first day of class along with other required materials (see syllabus):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CjxyXLDjwhYuP4Kkj9PhQLc3Z7v-eALP?usp=sharing
(info on English Department policies on add codes:
https://english.washington.edu/registration-policies-english-classes
Please do not email me to get into the class. You must speak with me after class during the first week.)
Course Description
Revolution and Repression: Late 20th century Black and Italian literary figures of radical subjectivity
The late 1960s and 1970s saw a historical surge in radical political organizing across the world. In every instance, the radical politics of the era was met with unprecedented violent state repression. In this course, we will perform a comparative reading of literary figurations and representations of the radical politics and state repression of this era, from two radical perspectives: the Black American political organizing of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and the radical movements in Italy associated with Operaismo and Autonomia.
Through our reading of four memoirs—Aaron Dixon’s My People are Rising, Assata Shakur’s Assata: An Autobiography, and Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything and The Unseen—we will compare and contrast 1) different formal literary strategies and how they are used to articulate revolutionary subjectivity, 2) differing political “conditions” of variously oppressed groups, the qualities of state repression unleashed upon them, and literary strategies for representing both, 3) how memoir itself works as a genre, and differing ways it has been used and adapted to contribute to varying political projects.
As a 200-level literature course that fulfills a W credit, this course will require a lot of reading (four novel-length books plus approximately four required supplementary article-length texts) and a lot of writing. That being said, if you do all this reading and writing, and come to class to participate, you can get a very good grade. While this course is not intended for English majors, it does assume an interest in literature, and your enthusiastic participation in the reading, writing, and thinking that we will do—individually and collectively—is absolutely necessary for a positive experience.