Title: TOPICS IN LITERATURE

PRQ:

Course Description: This class will examine the works of minor, really minor, minority or ethnic poets whose work gets neglected or ignored in survey classes simply because there is too much material to include. We will focus on the trends appearing in the work of these very diverse writers, but we will also attempt to place these writers within the larger schools of poetry flourishing in America today.

Note: This class may be counted toward the Ph.D. distribution requirement in Post-1900 American, British, or Post-Colonial literature.

Requirements: An analytical essay (15+ pages) typed using the MLA style, or a research paper (15+ pages) typed using the MLA style.

Jahan Ranazani, ed., The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol.2

Adrienne Rich’s The Fact of a Doorframe, Selected and New Poems, 1950-2001

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, ed. Unsettling America

Ray González, ed. Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today’s Latino Renaissance *

*Touching the Fire is out of print and can only be purchased through Amazon.

Suggested Texts:

Dana Gioia’s Can Poetry Matter?

James Longenbach’s Modern Poetry after Modernism

Marjorie Perloff’s The Dance of the Intellect

Vernon Shetley’s After the Death of Poetry

Kate Sontag & David Graham, eds. After Confession

Xiaojing Zhou’s The Ethics & Poetics of Alterity in Asian American Poetry