This seminar is designed to provide English majors with intensive and closely supervised work in critical reading and writing. Although sections of the course may address any literary question, period, or genre, they all provide an introduction to critical and methodological problems in literary studies.

In this course, we will read and analyze works of fantasy literature from the African Diaspora, beginning with the Yoruba author Amos Tutuola's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and concluding with the entirety of American fantasy author N.K. Jemisin's Stone Sky trilogy. As the fantasy genre builds its worlds from mythic and historical traditions-- J.R.R. Tolkein, whose work has had the most significant influence on the genre, cast Middle-Earth as a nostalgic vision of the lost harmonies of pre-industrial England, its cottage industries, chivalric lore, and countryside social hierarchies--we will inquire how the Diasporic history of struggle, displacement, imperialism, and enslavement shape our authors' engagement with the synchronic mythic structures of the New World. Moreover, how do these works engage with the vicissitudes of the modern, our age, the long shadow of racial oppression and empire, the Anthropocene, and the future?

This class satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement.

https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements

Book List:

Amos Tutuola My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Pauline Hopkins Of One Blood
N.K. Jemisin Stone Sky Trilogy

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills