Literature & Culture: Toni Morrison and American Culture

Catalog description

As a Nobel-laureate novelist, a professor of English and creative writing, an editor at Random House, a literary critic, a social critic, and a public intellectual, Toni Morrison has had, and continues to have, an extraordinary influence on U.S. culture. While much of her fiction focuses on African American women, her male characters are as insightfully drawn and almost as prominent in her works as her female characters. In this course, we will explore Morrisons influence on American culture through multiple lenses. We will read and discuss three novels: A Mercy, Morrisons exploration of the genesis of racism in U.S. slavery; Song of Solomon, a self-centered young mans search for his black masculine identity, aided by an unorthodox female ancestor-figure; and God Help the Child [due to be published in April], an examination of the traumatic effects of internalized racism on contemporary African American women. A video of Morrison and Danielpours opera Margaret Garner, a reworking of Beloved, will be part of our coursework. Selections from Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination will show Morrisons huge iconoclastic influence on white literary criticism. Well also study Morrisons Nobel Prize acceptance speech, with its gorgeous prose and provocative discussion of racial narratives. Finally, well read one or two of Morrisons didactic childrens books, particularly Please, Louise!, set inwhere else?a library. Throughout the semester we will study African American history, in part through The Black Book, which Morrison edited, and its Foreword, which Morrison wrote, and we will read and discuss articles from the disciplines of gender and womens studies, cultural studies, and psychology. Students will have the opportunity to use all these disciplines and texts in the critical writing they do for the course.