Topics in Ethnic American Literature: African American and Jewish Narratives of Passing

University of California, San Diego

Course Description:

This course centers on ‘passing’ – the assuming of another racial, ethic, gender, sexual, class, or other identity – as one of the constant companions of a world in which power and resources are distributed according to one’s identity. Given the specific conditions of slavery, the Holocaust, racism, and anti-Semitism, African-Americans and Jews in the U.S. have had especially important experiences of passing, sometimes even passing as each other. In considering Jewish and African American narratives of passing, we will understand the practice itself as both an important location for resisting and adapting to unfair power structures, and narratives of passing as crucial tools for expressing both cultural anxieties about as well as desires for mutable identities and alternative structures of power. To explore the nexus of power, anxiety, resistance, and desire that defines our subject, we will look at various novellas, short stories, novels, and films, making use of theories from critical race studies and queer theory to consider the status of the passer (and their witnesses) in terms of questions of authenticity, desire, political efficacy, privilege, etc. Finally, we will discuss how these questions shape the formal elements of the texts in which they are found.

Course Objectives:

• To develop a critical awareness of the history and literature of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and other passing in U.S. literature.
• To become engaged readers of a range of short stories, novels, and autobiographical narratives from nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. ethnic literature.
• To become knowledge producers in the field of U.S. ethnic literature through essay writing and other creative projects.

Required Texts:

Books:

• William & Ellen Craft, Edited by John Ernest. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, Copley, 2000.
• Gertrude Stein. Three Lives, Dover, 1994.
• Nella Larson. The Complete Fiction of Nella Larson, Anchor Books, 2001.
• Leslie Feinberg. Stone Butch Blues, Firebrand, 1993.
• Michael Chabon. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Random House, 2001.

Course Reader:

• “Recitatif”- Toni Morrison in Confirmation: an Anthology of African American Women
• “Introduction: The Politics of Passing”- Elaine K. Ginsberg, from Passing and the Fictions of Identity
• “Introduction: Living the Story: The Craft’s Journey” - John Ernest, from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
• Excerpt from “Chapter 3: Nationalism, Blackface, and the Jewish Question” - Michael Rogin, from Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot
• Excerpt from The Garies and Their Friends - Frank J. Webb
• Excerpt from Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto - Abraham Cahan
• Excerpt from Q.E.D. - Gertrude Stein
• Excerpt from Children of Loneliness - Anzia Yezierska, in How I Found American: Collected Stories of A. Y.
• Excerpt from Black No More - George S. Schuyler

Films:

• Jefferson’s Blood
• The Jazz Singer

Grading

• Weekly reading questions/participation 10%
• First paper (see below) 25%
• Second paper (see below) 35%
• Mapping and narrative in place of final (see below) 30%

Assignments

Reading questions: Each week before your next week’s readings I will provide you with questions to aid you in preparing for the upcoming readings. Be sure to respond thoughtfully to these questions as this should dramatically aid both your understanding of the material as well as your ability to participate in class.

Papers: Although both papers are 4-5 pages in length, I am staggering the grades to allow room for a learning curve in the course of the quarter. Both papers should represent formal academic arguments about the text(s) you consider. This means they should include a solid, arguable claim as well as significant grounding in the form of quotes, paraphrasing, description, and interpretation.

Argumentative Essay: Select a text from this course and using both textual analysis and a detailed description of material context to back up your claims, make an argument about the connections between historical context, form, and content in your text. Lay out what’s at stake in examining passing in this text, genre, moment, author.

Letter to Professor : Find an additional course text (a historical/theoretical essay or a filmic/visual/televisual/musical/literary work) that would benefit this course. Write a letter to the professor of this class making your case about why your text should be included in the next version of this course. Include in your case whether (and why) this should replace an existing course text. Consider not only the particular strengths of the material you are proposing but also the specific ways it would add to this course; that is, show why it would fill a gap in the course, why it would extend lines of enquiry already pursued by the course, etc. Also provide a detailed summary and background of your text and suggestions for ways it might be taught. Be sure to provide bibliographic information.

Final - Mapping and Narrative: Because this project takes the place of your final exam, it should represent the culmination of your work in the class. The assignment has two parts:

Mapping: For this part of the assignment, you must review all of the material we have covered in the class and create some kind of visual/schematic representation of it. You must include the historical events and movements we have covered, the authors and texts we have worked with, the genres of prose writing discussed, as well as any other issues of location/positioning you find instructive. You may choose to represent the politics, figures, and literatures and their relationships to each other in whatever way you find most useful. However you choose to design your schema, it should make an argument/tell a story.

Narrative: In this second part of your assignment, you must articulate verbally the argument/story you tell with your map. Explain the logic of your organization in such a way that someone not familiar with the period would understand something of the primary trajectories in literature and politics and their relationship to each other considered this quarter. (2-3 pages)