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ENGL 242 B: Reading Prose Fiction

Afro Asia and US Multiculturalism

Meeting Time: 
MTWTh 9:30am - 10:20am
Location: 
CDH 105
SLN: 
14065
Instructor:
Alan Williams
Alan Williams

Additional Details:

Autumn Quarter 2015
Course: ENGL 242B: Afro Asia and US Multiculturalism
Instructor: Alan Williams

When Mao Tse-Tung wrote in support of the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, he highlighted how ongoing racial discrimination is a "product of a colonialist and imperialist system." Given that the US state was founded on racism (slavery and genocide), scholars today note how civil rights legislation and the rise of US multiculturalism were not the beginning of the end of this system, but rather the imperial state's adjustment to antiracist and anti-colonial struggles not only in the US but abroad (communism in China, Korea, Vietnam, independence movements in India, pan-Africa, and so on).

A central aim of this course will be to think through the rise of US multiculturalism as an extension of the imperial project. In other words, as a class we will aim to rid ourselves of the nationalist "racial progress" narrative. Along with supplemental essays and short stories, we will read two important texts by black internationalists, W.E.B. Du Bois' 1928 fictional "Dark Princess: A Romance" and Richard Wright's creative nonfictional account of the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, "The Color Curtain." We will consider the use of fiction versus nonfiction when grappling with social questions. Both Du Bois and Wright ponder the US racial order on the global scale, are cautiously hopeful for alternatives, yet their texts remain hauntingly relevant today as Black Lives Matter critiques the US police state, as Japan re-militarizes after 70 years of pacifism, and as China invests heavily into developing Africa.

Required reading:

Du Bois, W.E.B. 1928. Dark Princess: A Romance (ISBN-13: 978-0199387434) (2014 edition)

Wright, Richard. 1956. The Color Curtain: A Report of the Bandung Conference (In the collection: "Black Power: Three Books from Exile" - ISBN-13: 978-0061449451) (2008 edition)

Assignments:

Two 5-page essays, weekly short writing. This course fulfills the "W" requirement.

Catalog Description: 
Critical interpretation and meaning in works of prose fiction, representing a variety of types and periods.
GE Requirements: 
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Writing (W)
Other Requirements Met: 
Status: 
Active
Last updated: 
March 16, 2016 - 12:38pm
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