ENG318

Description

In the twenty-first century, war is an omnipresent feature of lived experience and/or the media people consume. This course prompts students to reflect critically on this reality and evaluate historical changes in representations of war and its legacies. It asks, how have war and its aftereffects been promoted, resisted, recorded, and/or reimagined in American literature, film, visual art, and other cultural artifacts? Within contexts such as the Civil War and World War II, as well as the ongoing event of militarization, we will analyze authors' creative representations of issues like nationalism, citizenship, political activism, colonialism, mental illness, gender, racism, and the conflict between official and unofficial renderings of history. Course materials might include works by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Loreta Janeta Vel zquez, Stephen Crane, Alice Dunbar Nelson, John Okada, Min Okubo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, Craig Santos Perez, and Grace Cho.