Plantation Modernism in American Literature

Annotation

OBJECTIVES

This course will explore the idea—most powerfully expressed by Edouard Glissant—that much of “New World” modern literature arose from the disintegration of the Plantation past and the releasing of new voices, idioms into modernity. We will apply this idea to the example of the US South to search for the presence of plantation history in modernist American literature, to test the limits of the relation between the disintegration of the Plantation system and the rise of modernism under conditions of post-colonialism, and to consider some of the principal theoretical reflections and historical scholarship on the relation between plantation history, anti-slavery, modernism, and modernity.

Jean Toomer, Cane

William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

Allen Tate, The Fathers

Julia Peterkin, Black April

Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road

Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (and other plays)

Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl

ASSESSMENT

Each student will: 1. present one book review-style report on a major volume of criticism drawn from a list provided (1000 words) 2. submit one exposition and critique of a major periodical essay (1000 words) 3. identify one problem or question in one of the literary texts and sketch how the subject might be explored

(in-class presentation)