Dr. White's homepage

Instructional materials

terms index

Model Assignments

Instructor: Craig White   Office: Bayou 2529-8   Phone: 281 283 3380.       Email: whitec@uhcl.edu

Office Hours: M 1-4, 7-8; T 4-6 & by appointment

class music

Course Policies

Attendance policy: One free cut permitted without comment or penalty;
more than one absence jeopardizes your status in course. If you continue to cut or miss, drop the course.
Even with medical or other emergency excuses, high numbers of absences or partial absences
result in a lower or failing course grade.

Texts to purchase:

Louise Erdrich, The Round House (2012) HarperPerennial ISBN: 0 05 097554 7

Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us: A Memoir (2012) Washington Square) ISBN: 978-1-4516-6178-1

Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979) ISBN: 978-0-8070-8369-7

Assignments

Midterm 1 (26 February)

Midterm 2  (2 April)

Final exam (7 May)

Student Presentations

model assignments highlights

Monday,  22 January 2018: introductions

Readings: preview American Indian Origin Stories & selections from Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories

Poem: Chrystos, "I Have Not Signed a Treaty with the U.S. Government"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: instructor

Agenda

introduction / website syllabus

presentations, assignments

student information / preferences

assignments

origins as minority identity (not immigrant)

assimilation and resistance

sample poem

Monday,  29 January 2018: Origin stories & Zitkala-Sa 

Reading assignments: American Indian Origin Stories: "Iroquois Creation Story"; "How the White Race came to America"; selections from Genesis

reading discussion leader(s):  Cynthia Cleveland ("Iroquois"); Sarah Travis ("How . . . ")

Poetry:  Peter Blue Cloud, "The Cry"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: instructor

Reading assignments: selections from Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories: homepage including information on Zitkala-Sa and American Indian Boarding Schools; IMPRESSIONS OF AN INDIAN CHILDHOOD; THE SCHOOL DAYS OF AN INDIAN GIRL; A DREAM OF HER GRANDFATHER

reading discussion leader(s):  

Poetry: Louise Erdrich, “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways”

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Kristen Hoover

web review / outside text:  Sioux Indians & The Chippewa / Ojibwa (instructor)

Agenda

presentation assignments, next week

Course Objectives: loss & survival

immigrant / dominant culture & minority

Indian origin stories: Cynthia, Sarah

poetry: instructor

[break]

Zitkala-Sa: instructor

poetry: Kristen

American Indians as minority

midterm1 

Discussion Questions: (centered around Primary Course Objectives)

1. Evidence of minority identity, culture, or voice (or . . . immigrant or dominant culture).

American Indian Origin Stories: 1a. How do these origin stories differ from or resemble Western Culture's Origin Stories of Genesis and Evolution?

1b. How do the stories represent a distinctly American Indian story, possibly of loss and survival?

Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories: 1c. At what point(s) does Zitkala-Sa rewrite the Genesis Creation story to fit the Amerind story of loss and survival?

1d. Zitkala-Sa grows up in a traditional culture, then moves into a modern culture: See Modern & Traditional Cultures. How does a traditional culture appear on the reservation, a modern culture at school; and how do the two types of culture conflict, adapt, or otherwise interact with each other? As another example, contrast the manners Zitkala-Sa is taught with the manners of the white people on the train. Also compare child-rearing attitudes.

1e. How are Zitkala-Sa's experiences at school representative of problems in multicultural education? Consider tension between modern institutions and traditional family structures.

1f. Assimilation or resistance, or some hybrid or mixed identity?

2. Identification & analysis of literary purposes, devices, or genres.

American Indian Origin Stories: 2a. North American Indian cultures were almost exclusively oral or spoken cultures rather than written cultures like those of European-American settlers. How is a spoken culture evident in these stories? What attractions or downsides to either spoken or written cultures, especially in terms of figurative speech?

Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories: 2b. Zitkala-Sa's early-life sketches depict an oral-spoken culture, while her experiences with missionaries and school show a written culture. How and where do these oral-spoken and written cultures appear? What different social structures do they entail—e.g., traditional or modern cultures? What strengths and limits to either? (Compare to 21st century USA and New World Order as "post-literate" society.)

3. Identification & analysis of universal human attributes?

American Indian Origin Stories: 3a. At what points does a dominant-culture reader connect to these texts, and where are they strange (while potentially fascinating). What advantages to reading literature that you don't identify with?

Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories: 3b. What humanizes or dehumanizes characters in Zitkala-Sa's stories?

Monday,  5 February 2018: begin The Round House (study guide)

Reading assignments: The Round House through chapter 5 + "Afterword" + study guide

reading discussion leader(s): Justin Murphy

Poetry: Simon J. Ortiz, "A New Story";

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Kristen Hoover

web review / outside text: Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota; Native American music (instructor); Apess

Agenda:

conventions, fiction

3 primary objectives

presentations > midterm Essay 1

poetry presentation > poem: Kristen

[break]

midterm

discussion: Justin

Round House page

assignments (questions to be added to) 

Simon J. Ortiz, b. 1941 

Discussion Questions: (centered around Primary Course Objectives)

1. Evidence of minority identity, culture, or voice (or . . . immigrant or dominant / "settler" culture).

1a. How much has Joe's family assimilated to the USA's dominant culture, and to what extent do they choose to remain Indian or minority?

1b. How does the rape of Joe's mother Geraldine duplicate in gendered terms the racial / ethnic minority experience? ("Afterword"). Is it appropriate to regard Geraldine's rape as a symbol or metaphor for American Indian experience of loss and survival?

1c. How to evaluate American Indians' or minorities' maintenance of spiritual or supernatural entities like ghosts or wendigo spirits?

2. Identification & analysis of literary purposes, devices, or genres.

2a. What possible distinct genres or types of story (e.g., detective, YA or coming-of-age, revenge, "dramady," others) do you recognize in the opening chapters? What do we learn about genres from the co-existence of so many genres?

2b. How does Erdrich develop and vary character to make us love, hate, or know different characters like Mom, Dad, Cappy, Father Travis?

3. Identification & analysis of universal human attributes?

3a. How much does Joe's early adolescence serve as a universal human experience? Relate to other family identities or relations?

3b. How do American Indian (or minority) cultures expand or vary the definition of family?

Monday, 12 February 2018: continue The Round House (study guide)

Reading assignments: The Round House through chapter 8, p. 199.

reading discussion leader(s): Brad Cannon

Poetry: Louise Erdrich, "Family Reunion"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Christa Van Allen

Agenda

3 primary objectives > Midterm 1

mimesis > novel

mimesis > education, entertainment

poetry: Christa

discussion: Brad

assignments, syncretism

Louise Erdrich's novel
The Round House
won National Book Award
for fiction in 2012 

Discussion Questions: (centered around Primary Course Objectives)

1. Evidence of minority identity, culture, or voice (or . . . immigrant or dominant / "settler" culture).

1a. How does the novel represent the Indian minority culture and the dominant / "settler" culture differently? How do the Indian characters see the dominant / "settler" culture, or how much do they see or interact with it at all? (Assimilation or resistance, or some hybrid or mixed identity?)

2. Identification & analysis of literary purposes, devices, or genres.

2a. Continue: What possible distinct genres or types of story (e.g., detective, YA or coming-of-age, revenge, "dramady," others) do you recognize in the opening chapters? What do we learn about genres from the co-existence of so many genres?

Specifically, what can we learn about comedy / humor and how it works from examples in this novel? Relative to literature's purposes of education and entertainment, how does serious literary fiction benefit from including comedy & humor?

3. Identification & analysis of universal human attributes?

3a. What human behaviors benefit positive human relationships like friendship and supportive families?

3b. Conversely, what behaviors (however human) tend to divide people and frustrate human development?

Monday, 19 February 2018: conclude The Round House (study guide)

Reading assignments: complete The Round House

reading discussion leader(s): instructor

Poetry: Peter Blue Cloud, "Crazy Horse Monument" (canceled?)

Poetry reader / discussion leader: instructor

model assignments highlights: Katie Morin?  (final exam essays on American Indian literature)

Agenda

assignments

Round House discussion

loss and survival

[break]

midterm handouts

web highlights, research proposals

Models: Katie

Primary objectives 1 & 2 literary devices

Model of Crazy Horse Monument
w/ mountain sculpture behind 

Discussion Questions: (centered around Primary Course Objectives)

1. Evidence of minority identity, culture, or voice (or . . . immigrant or dominant / "settler" culture).

1a. How does the novel represent the Indian minority culture and the dominant / "settler" culture differently? How do the Indian characters see the dominant / "settler" culture, or how much do they see or interact with it at all? (Assimilation or resistance, or some hybrid or mixed identity?)

1b. Syncretism is a merging of relgious beliefs and symbols—not conversion but compromise, or acculturation rather than assimilation. What examples of syncretism in religion or acculturation in Indian lifestyles, clothing, occupations?

2. Identification & analysis of literary purposes, devices, or genres.

2a. Continue: What possible distinct genres or types of story (e.g., detective, YA or coming-of-age, revenge, "dramady," others) do you recognize in the opening chapters? What do we learn about genres from the co-existence of so many genres?

Students offer examples of comedy / humor and analyze in terms of pages on comic theory and wit and humor?  Relative to literature's purposes of education and entertainment, how does serious literary fiction benefit from including comedy & humor?

2b. The doppelganger is a familiar archetype of gothic and detective fiction and origin stories, in which good and bad twins, siblings, or strangers fight for control of identity and destiny. What serious literary or moral purposes can the doppelganger device serve. (Round House features Linda and Linden Lark, maybe Joe and Cappy; others?)

2c. Erdrich's Round House was generally well-received but received some criticism for too many digressions, and my limited criticism is that the concluding chapter feels hurried (perhaps necessarily), with a number of possible resolutions in play. Do you agree with these criticisms or see other imperfections in an otherwise impressive novel?

3. Identification & analysis of universal human attributes?

3a. What human behaviors benefit positive human relationships like friendship and supportive families?

3b. Conversely, what behaviors (however human) tend to divide people and frustrate human development?

flag of New Mexico

flag of New Mexico

Reading assignments: Story of the Virgin of Guadalupe; brief biography of Juan Seguin; Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, Personal Memoirs; Gloria Anzaldua on Borderlands / La Frontera;

reading discussion leader(s): Christa Van Allen

Poetry: Pat Mora, "Fences"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Kara Delaughter

history and terms: Are Mexican-Americans immigrants, minorities, or both? history of Mexico; mestizo; Hispanic / Latino; New World Immigrants; Reyna Grande

Agenda

Midterm1 > Midterm2

literary devices, purposes

Mexican-Americans; Assignments

poetry: Kara

[break]

discussion of Guadalupe: Christa

Seguin

face of the Lady of Guadelupe
 

Discussion Questions: How do Mexican Americans conform to or exceed Detailed Objective 3c. Mexican American narrative: a border people? La Frontera?
Recent literary theory regarding Mexican American identity concentrates on the idea of "the border" or "la frontera" as a site or condition
where different cultures meet, clash, mingle, and evolve to new identities. creating unique Mexican American identities compared to other American ethnic groups

How do our readings today show a people pulled between competing identities?

Story of the Virgin of Guadalupe: 1. Are Mexicans European-descended or Indian-descended or both? (< mestizo)

2. Is their religion Catholic, or traditional, or both? (syncretism)

Juan Nepomuceno Seguin, Personal Memoirs:

3. How do Seguin's experiences and his internal conflicts conform to the idea of Mexican-Americans as a "border people" embodying distinct national traditions or feeling conflicting pulls from both?

3a. Is Seguin a Texan or a Mexican? An American or a Mexican? What relevance to contemporary Mexican-American identity?

4. Note use of "adventurers" [1,3, 4] to describe non-Mexican peoples who "swarm" into San Antonio. How does this change or challenge the image of early Anglo-Americans in the Southwest as "pioneers" or "cowboys?" (Objective 7a. How does Minority literature help you see the nation's dominant culture differently?

Monday, 19 March 2018: begin The Distance Between Us

Reading assignments: The Distance Between Us, Book One, pp. 1-159.

author's page: Reyna Grande

reading discussion leader(s): Justin Murphy

Poetry: Pat Mora, "Señora X No More" (Pat Mora's homepage)

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Anari Oliver

history and terms: Are Mexican-Americans immigrants, minorities, or both? history of Mexico; mestizo; Hispanic / Latino; New World Immigrants; Reyna Grande 

Agenda

review Midterm1 (terms index) > Midterm2

Course Objectives

Seguin, Personal Memoirs

Are Mexican-Americans immigrants, minorities, or both?

poetry: Anari

[break]

Declaration; minorities: class > race

Distance discussion: Justin

assignments

Pat Mora, b. 1942, El Paso TX

Discussion Questions:

Primary Objective 1 (Minority) 

1. The USA's dominant culture regards Mexican Americans primarily as immigrants, which largely describes the experience of Reyna Grande and her family in The Distance Between Us. In what ways, however, may Grande's characters also be described as minorities, or how is the Mexican immigrant experience complicated by geography and history?

1a., Pay particular attention to socioeconomic or class behaviors or values, esp. traditional / dysfunctional family.

 Primary Objective 2 (Literary Techniques)

2. In contrast to the fiction or novel Round House, The Distance Between Us is memoir or nonfiction. What differences follow in terms of characterization, narrative, perspective, and nonfiction's power to represent a minority voice and identity?

2a. Like Erdrich, Grande is also a poet. How does she enliven or unify her nonfiction with the devices of lyric poetry?

2b. Erdrich in Round House made Joe a past-future narrator, both describing Joe's actions from a present adolescent perspective and commenting on these actions from a future adult perspective. How much does Grande limit herself to a child's perspective? How much does she comment from an adult perspective? What are the effects of these different balances?

2c. As Grande grows up and encounters the modern world beyond her village, how much does her nonfiction reflect her giving up a "fairy tale world" of heroes and villains and accepting instead a more factual world in which everyone struggles against their own limits?

Monday, 26 March 2018:  conclude The Distance Between Us

Reading assignments: The Distance Between Us, Book Two, pp. 161-322.

author's page: Reyna Grande

reading discussion leader(s): Ambrosia Alderete

Poetry: Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Green Chile"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Shane Murphy

model assignments highlights: instructor (final exam essays on Mexican American literature)

history and terms: Are Mexican-Americans immigrants, minorities, or both? history of Mexico; mestizo; Hispanic / Latino; New World Immigrants; Reyna Grande  

Agenda

American minorities

review Mexican American literature

Midterm1 > Midterm2 > model assignments

poetry: Shane

[break]

discussion: Ambrosia

literary devices?

Carlos, Reyna, & Mago with Aunt 

Discussion Questions: Continue questions from 19 March

1. Traditional / dysfunctional family associated with minority / socioeconomic behaviors): Since nearly everyone has some sentimental feeling for traditional families, how do we discuss the fact that traditional families often limit individual achievement in modern America, which emphasizes individualism and separation from past traditions to embrace the new? (Question 1a from last week)

1a. similarly sensitive issue: "unprotected sex" and early child-bearing. Compare "Red Families v. Blue Families."

1b. Why are women more equal—at least legally or potentially—in the USA than in more traditional societies from which many immigrants and minorities arrive? Many potential answers, but what cultural attractions or risks to equality?

2. Overall, Reyna's story or career mixes minority and immigrant identities or cultural narrative: like minorities, she sometimes clings to an identity separate from the USA's dominant culture, but like immigrants she learns English, trusts authorities, excels in public education, and chooses the modern future over the traditional past, positively assimilating.

2a. How do Reyna's siblings' lives or careers compare in terms of minority or immigrant identities. How much do they negatively or positively assimilate?

2b. Back to sensitive issues, how much do the siblings' differences track class-differences as marked by wealth, education, health, geographic location, or isolation? 

Literary devices (Obj. 2)

3. How does Reyna's journey transition from oral / spoken culture to a written / literate culture?

What makes us more or less human? (obj. 3)

4. What literary devices or events exceed immigrant-minority divisions to make the characters more or less human?

Monday, 9 April 2018: selections from Equiano, Douglass

Reading assignment: Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of . . . Olaudah Equiano, The African (1789) (read Chapters 1-2 & 1st 3 paragraphs of Ch. 3)

Reading assignment: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

reading discussion leader(s): Anari Oliver

Poetry:  Phillis Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Ambrosia Alderete

Agenda

midterms > final

 minority definitions; human; "Red Families v. Blue Families."

African Americans as definitive minority

poetry: Ambrosia

[break]

discussion: Anari

assignments

Frederick Douglass, 1818-95 

Discussion Questions:

1. How did the authors of the slave narratives make their readers care? (Many if not most of their readers would have been whites, not slaves.)

1a. Why the emphasis on literacy? How can English / Literature / Reading teachers use this theme to educational purposes?

2. How does the existence of slavery in Africa (in Equiano) complicate Americans' attitudes toward American slavery?

3. What about the sexual component of slavery, esp. in Douglass? How do we discuss mixed-race births, and what impact do they have on racial identity?

4. If minorities lack "voice and choice," what examples from texts? How does slavery influence human speech or dialogue? What opportunities arise for cross-ethnic alliances, and what foils them?

5. How does slavery "dehumanize" both blacks and whites? How may the history of slavery reveal what is human?

Monday, 16 April 2018: selections from Jacobs, begin Kindred

Reading assignments: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (complete selections)

reading discussion leader(s): Kristin Mizell

Reading assignments: Kindred, pp. 1-51 (through "The Fire")

reading discussion leader(s): Shane Murphy

Poetry: Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Cynthia Cleveland

Agenda

final exam

Jacobs: Kristin

narrative > cultural narrative > dream narrative

poem: Cynthia

Kindred: Shane

Harriet Jacobs, 1813-97
(photo from 1894) 

Discussion Question for both texts: How does slavery "dehumanize" both blacks and whites? How may literature teach us what is human?

Discussion Questions for Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:

1. How surprising is the sexual component of slavery? Why isn't it acknowledged and discussed? What are the impacts of mixed-race births? Their impact on racial identity? What implications for America as a "classless society" that instead organizes itself as separate races?

2. What does Jacobs say about being not just a slave, but a woman slave? Can minority as gender be related or analogous to minority as race, ethnicity, or culture?

Objective 2a. Gender: Is the status of women, lesbians, and homosexuals analogous to that of ethnic minorities in terms of voice and choice? Do "women of color" become "double minorities?" HJ 5.4 law; 6.20 mistress;

Discussion Questions for Kindred:

1. Discuss the use of science fiction / time travel as a literary device for discussing a historical event like slavery.

2. How does understanding slavery as a foundation of American history help understand not just black America but white America?

Monday, 23 April 2018: continue Kindred

Reading assignments: Kindred,  pp. 52-188 (through "The Fight"); (back matter: "Reader's Guide" pp. 265-288.

reading discussion leader(s): Kara Delaughter

Poetry: Countee Cullen, "Incident" & "For a Poet" (Harlem Renaissance)

Poetry reader / discussion leader: Brad Cannon

(Question for Cullen poems: Why is "Incident" more familiar from school anthologies and teaching than "For a Poet?" What distinct values for teaching literature generally and minority literature?

model assignments highlights:  Sarah Travis (essays on African American literature in Model Assignments, most often in midterm essays, but also welcome to look at African American research projects)

Agenda

assignments

Midterm > final

model assignments: Sara

Kindred discussion: Kara

poetry: Brad

Countee Cullen (1903-1946) 

Discussion Questions for 23 & 30 April:

1. Discuss the use of science fiction / time travel as a literary device for discussing a historical event like slavery.

1a. How is slavery a defining historical instance of minority status? How does that minority status continue for Dana in the 20th century?

1b. Continuing the sexual dimension of slavery, how does gender identity play into or against the racial or ethnic dimensions of slavery or minority status? Compare and contrast the relations between Kevin and Weylin, Dana and Margaret, Dana and Sarah, and Dana and Rufus.

2. Most people don't like history (except as self-affirming), but how does history help us avoid fiction's tendency to divide people into heroes and villains, victims and victimizers? Or flip: how does fiction simplify history?

2a. How does fiction "personalize" slavery or make us care and see its consequences for blacks and whites? How does fiction complicate our ideas or visions about history?

2b. How does understanding slavery as a foundation of American history help understand not just black America but white America?

2c. How may "the Dream" appear in Kindred? Compare to "ethics of compromise," p. 278. (Jacobs 10.6)

3. For literary purposes or devices, how and why does Kindred introduce two leading characters who are writers, a past character (Miss Hannah) who was a reader, and Rufus as a character with a reading disorder? What are the consequences for identity from being able to read and write well?

4. For what makes us human, how is slavery dehumanizing, especially in its destruction or distortion of black and white families?

5. Watch for references to Frederick Douglass.

6. History as conditioning, deterministic; environmental influences on character, humanity—how much can we escape or redirect history?

Monday, 30 April 2018: conclude Kindred

Reading assignments: Kindred, complete.

reading discussion leader(s): Cynthia Cleveland

Poetry:  Terrance Hayes, "The Blue Terrance" or Tracy K. Smith, "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes?"

Poetry reader / discussion leader(s): Kristin Mizell

Agenda

final exam

Kristin: poem

review Kindred & critical essay

evaluations