Wagner College, Fall 2002
Dr. Pranav Jani Office Hours: MW 3-4:30, or by
appointment
Parker Hall 302 http://www.wagner.edu/faculty/users/pjani
pjani@wagner.edu http://webboard.wagner.edu/~pjani
(718) 390-3362
Paired with
English 425: Senior Seminar, “White Trash” (Dr. Peter Sharpe)
Course Description:
For English majors, graduation is often represented as a
confrontation with “the real world,” a space outside the campus in which
poetry, art, and intellectual thought itself are regarded as having no
practical value. Sure you know how to drag an interpretation out of a short
story, but what can you do?
This class will focus on the issues of race and class in
order to show how the tools learned in English classes offer tremendous
possibilities for understanding personal and social experience that go far
beyond literary texts. On one level,
the historical and theoretical aspects of the course will contribute to the
discussions of “white trash” in the Senior Seminar. On another level, they will help us delve into your own
experiences in the internships and in everyday life, as you move from a private
college into the workforce. Finally, we
will step back and learn the methods by which literary and experiential texts
can be analyzed productively.
Required Texts
bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters
Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish
Became White
Bakari Kitwana, The Hip Hop
Generation
Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
Assignments
and Grading
Journal: 10%
Presentation: 10%
Participation: 20%
Paper #1 (1,000 words) 30%
Paper #2 (2,000 words) 30%
Experiential
Learning
This RFT has an experiential learning component, which must be fulfilled by working for at least 75 hours as an intern. This experience will be part of the classroom discussion, integrated into our coursework in the best way possible.
Journal
To fulfill RFT
requirements, you will be asked to make weekly entries in an online, public
journal on the webboard. Each entry – a
few paragraphs long – should attempt to analyze your
internship/research/writing experience in terms of the concepts learned in
class, whether theoretical or literary.
Please make your entry before 6 am every Monday morning through the
semester; late entries will not be accepted.
Presentation
Each student is required to do an oral presentation on the
assigned readings. After confirming
that you have a good grasp of what the text is saying, try to make an argument
during your presentation, outlining your own critical reading of the article.
Class Participation and Attendance
Try to be actively
present in class by being prepared to participate in class discussions,
critique the readings, and express opinions.
Not only is discussion important to your grade, but sharing your ideas
in class will help refining your ideas in your papers.
More than three absences—excused or unexcused—will affect
your grade. It is your responsibility
to communicate with me about missed class time.
Timely Submission of Work
Out of fairness to each student, I will only give full
credit to papers and assignments turned in by the due date. This may require planning ahead on your
part, especially if you have multiple papers due on the same day. Late papers will be knocked down
one-third of a grade for each class that they are late. On the other hand, please do not hesitate to
speak with me about a due date in case of emergency.
Dr. Pranav Jani
Fall 2003
Weeks 1-2: The Social Construction of Race and Reality
T 8/26 Theory: What is Race? What is Class? What is Theory?
Experience: Discussion of Experiential Learning
Th 8/28 bell hooks, “Introduction,” Where We Stand
Noel
Ignatiev, “Introduction,” How the Irish Became White
Marx, from Capital (CP)
Monique Wittig,
“One is Not Born a Woman” (2014-21)
T 9/2 Langston Hughes, “The Negro
Artist and the Racial Mountain” (CP)
Zora Neale Hurston, “What White Publishers Won’t Print” (CP)
Edward
Said, from Orientalism (CP)
Th 9/4 Suheir Hammad, “First Writing Since”: http://www.teachingforchange.org/News%20Items/first_writing_since.htm
“Introduction,” White Trash: Race and Class in America
Clips from Dumb and Dumber
Weeks 3-5: “Blackness” and “Whiteness” Through the 19th
Century
T 9/9 Lance Selfa, “Slavery and the Origins of Racism”: http://www.isreview.org/issues/26/roots_of_racism.shtml
Marx and Engels, from The Communist Manifesto (CP)
Th 9/11 Ignatiev, Chapters 1-2
T 9/16 Ignatiev, Chapters 3-5
Clips from Gangs of New York
*Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”:
http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/doug_a10.htm
Th 9/18 Ignatiev, Chapter 6 and Afterword
T 9/23 Jack Bloom, “The Political Economy of Southern Racism” (CP)
Clips from Birth of a Nation
Th 9/25 NO CLASS
Due:
Paper #1 (1000 words) – email by 12 noon to pjani@wagner.edu
Weeks 6-7:
Race and Class Through the 20th Century
T 9/29 Bloom, “The Emergence of the New Negro in the South” (CP)
Th 10/2 hooks, Chapters 1-3
T 10/7 Howard Zinn, “Or Does it Explode?” (CP)
Clips from Panther
* Bloom, “Ghetto Revolts, Black Power, and the Limits of the Civil Rights Coalition” (CP)
Th 10/9 Bakari Kitwana, The Hip Hop Generation, Chapters 1-3
T 10/14 NO CLASS – Monday classes
hooks, Chapters 5-7
T 10/21 Roland Barthes, from Mythologies (CP)
Michael Foucault, from Discipline and Punish (CP)
Th 10/23 Kitwana, Chapter 8
Jay-Z and Panjabi MC
T 10/28 Research: Athletes and “welfare queens,” criminals and entertainers
Th 10/30 Henry
Louis Gates, “Talking Black” (CP)
Weeks 11-13: Intersecting Categories
T 11/4 hooks, Ch. 8-10; Kitwana, Chapter 4
Th 11/6 Sandra
M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “The Madwoman in the Attic” (CP)
Barbara Smith, “Towards a Black Feminist Criticism” (2302-15)
T 11/11 Toni
Morrison, Tar Baby
Th 11/13 Morrison
T 11/18 NO CLASS
Th 11/20 Film: Stephanie Black, Life and Debt
T 11/25 1992: Riot or Rebellion? (readings TBA)
Th 11/27 NO CLASS
T 12/2 Beyond Black and White
Due Paper #2 (2000 words)