The Literature of the Americas

This course will focus on identifying moments of continuity and discontinuity in the literatures of the Americas, both in time and space. We will look at a wide-range of literatures of the Americas in comparative perspective, emphasizing continuities and crises that are common to North American, Central American, and South American literatures, from the colonial period until today. Topics include the definitions of such concepts as empire and colonialism, the encounters between worldviews of European and indigenous peoples, the emergence of creole and racially mixed populations, slavery, the New World voice, myths of America as paradise or utopia, the coming of modernism, twentieth-century avant-gardes, and distinctive modern episodes in unaccustomed conversation with each other.