Plantation Modernism in American Literature - AAA300353

• Title: Plantation Modernism in American Literature
• Guaranteed by: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Faculty: Faculty of Arts
• Actual: from 2011
• Semester: summer
• Points: 2
• E-Credits: 4
• Examination process: summer s.:
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, C [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: not taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Is provided by: AAA500353
• Guarantor: John T. Matthews

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)

Last update: Znojemská Helena, Mgr., Ph.D. (24.01.2011)