Ethnic Literature in America

A black and white photograph showing a man walking up the steps to a movie theater with a separate entrance for African Americans.

A photograph of a black man entering a movie theater with a segregated entrance. In this course students will tackle challenging materials to explore how ethnic writing has changed American culture. (This image is in the public domain.)

Instructor(s)

MIT Course Number

21L.709

As Taught In

Spring 2017

Level

Undergraduate

Cite This Course

Course Description

Course Features

Course Description

Although this class starts by critically examining the term “ethnic” as it defines a wide range of cultural forms over time, we will focus mostly on contemporary writers. Questions to consider will include: How has ethnic writing changed American culture and renovated forms of literary expression? What are the varieties and nuances of what we might call an ethnic subjectivity? What could it mean to harbor fugitives within the self: transgressive thoughts or a “foreign” identity? And what is the future of “ethnic” literature in a global space?

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Related Content

Wyn Kelley. 21L.709 Ethnic Literature in America. Spring 2017. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


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