ENGL 440 C: Special Studies In Literature

I’ve borrowed the title from a series of fictions later produced as a television series about queer life in 1970’s San Francisco. This course is unlikely to return to that place and time, but I invoke the title to foreground what this capstone course will examine and to flag its approach. During the quarter we’ll read a number of urban fictions alongside visual media (eg., film and telelvision) and social theory that examine the city. A number of these texts explicitly or implicitly represent urban life as the model of national community; many home in on the disparity between the poor and the relatively well to do and/or the differential impacts of urban renewal. We’ll start our examination of the city with a flash back to the turn of the twentieth century representations of the city, briefly touch down on mid twentieth century representations of it, and fast forward to the present on which we will spend most of our time and which will include an examination of Seattle. Active participation in class, short responses to assigned readings, a group project, and 7-8 page final paper are required. Expect to read short fiction, essays and social theory—all collected in a course pack—in relation to visual media (for starters, Bladerunner and excerpts from The Wire) a few novels and one book length journalistic expose on New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Books we’ll definitely read are Wideman’s Two Cities; Eggers Zeitoun