Behind a Mask: Fakes, Frauds, and Fictions of Identity in Nineteenth-Century America / Spring 2010 / Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:25-2:40 p.m., Avery 102
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Course Description The United States has always been a place, or has considered itself to be a place, in which people are free to reinvent themselves. For those who move to another territory or city and assume a new name, become outlaws or are escaping from a criminal past, or disguise themselves to pass as belonging to a race, social class, or gender not their own, identity is a fluid concept, not a fixed one. This course explores the diverse themes, social contexts, and intellectual backgrounds of the American novel from its beginnings in romantic tradition through the realist and naturalist movements of the late nineteenth century. We’ll investigate the novels in terms of their formal properties as well as through social contexts and issues of race, class, and gender, but a larger question we’ll address involves American identity: how does this collection of works, which includes examples of cross-racial and cross-gender disguises,outlaws, artists, idealists, monomaniacs, prostitutes, and murderers, constitute a picture of nineteenth-century America? What concepts of individualism, equality, and justice do these authors portray, and to what extent does the reality of life in the U.S. meet the patriotic rhetoric about its ideas of freedom? Book List for Spring 2010
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Dr. Donna Campbell |
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