In this course, students investigate the way literature and other art forms have both represented the diversity of the United States and shaped conceptions of diversity. English 166AC provides students with an opportunity to deepen and complicate their appreciation of the way fictions make meaning, shape our understanding and experience of the world, and transform society. Topics vary from term to term and might focus on a form (e.g. "Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema"), a literary historical period (e.g. "Race and Revision in Early America"), or a concept (e.g. nationhood in "Literatures of the Asian Diaspora in America").

The American city is a complex and dynamic organism—and the subject of a great body of literature (both fiction and non-fiction) and film. Focusing on New York City, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, this course will trace and critically engage how American urban development has been depicted on the page and on screen from the early twentieth century to today. By studying how writers and filmmakers have addressed the dramatic changes that impact American urban spaces, this course asks students to write critically about race and urban development from 1930s redlining and white flight to the battles over “urban renewal” and the anti-eviction campaigns of the Civil Rights era, the impact of 1970s neoliberal policies, the “war on drugs” and militarized “broken windows” policing of the 1980s, the urban uprisings of the early 1990s, and today’s hyper-gentrification. Paying special attention to how different racial groups – European-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and Latinx – have engaged, avoided, or confronted each other within these urban spaces, we will study how these changing cityscapes have on the one hand reflected and on the other hand actively influenced seismic changes in racial formation in the United States. Over the course of this summer session, students will submit three shorter written reflections on the readings we will cover. This class satisfies the Literatures in English Major Requirement. https://english.berkeley.edu/major-requirements

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills