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Class number:
2808
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Title: Freedom & Confinement |
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Department: English |
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Career: Undergraduate |
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Component: Seminar |
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Session: Regular |
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Instructor's Permission Required: No |
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Grading Basis: Regular |
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Units: 1.00 |
| Enrollment limited to 15 |
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Current enrollment: 9 |
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Available seats: 6 |
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Start date: Monday, January 22, 2024 |
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End date: Friday, May 10, 2024 |
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Mode of Instruction: In Person |
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Schedule: TR: 1:30PM-2:45PM, 115V - 106 |
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Instructor(s): Wyss, Hilary |
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Prerequisite(s): None |
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Distribution Requirement: Meets Humanities Requirement |
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Note: For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written between 1700-1900. This seminar is research intensive. |
Course Description:
Even as America defines itself as "the land of the free," narratives of confinement have a prominent place in our national literature. In this class we will begin to explore this conundrum, focusing our attention on early American texts in which confinement operates as a structuring principle. We will explore ideas of imprisonment and captivity from colonial America through the nineteenth century, looking at such texts as criminal narratives compiled by ministers and others, captivity narratives, slave narratives, prison writing, and early American novels, among other texts. Along the way we will touch on issues of race and gender as well as institutions of confinement including slavery, prisons and even schools in early America, using appropriate theoretical models to frame our conversations. |