Unique course offering spring semester 2009!
ENGL 3351W: Voices from the Gaps: Writing and Art by Women of Color
M, W 2:30-4:35, Lind 217
Instructor, Sara Cohen
The Spring 2008 section of Voices from the Gaps will concentrate on Latin American and Caribbean Jewish women writers of color in order to ask what each of these terms means ("Latin American," "Caribbean," "Jewish," "of color") and to look at the different ways that these diasporic identities intersect and are represented in the literature of Achy Obejas, Ana-Maurin, Lara, Alicia Kozameh, and Ana María Shua, among others. We will be reading genres ranging from memoir to magical realism in addition to theoretical works about the concepts of mestizaje, borderlands, and Diaspora. We will also think about the significance of these concepts, particularly borderlands and Diaspora, in relation to cyberspace--which is where we will publish some of our work on these writers.
This class is associated with the award-winning Web site Voices from the Gaps (http://voices.cla.umn.edu), a web-based project that recognizes the work of a transnational community of women writers and artists of color maintained by the English department here at the University of Minnesota. Part of the intention of this class is to get work produced by students published on the Web site, thus satisfying the dual purposes of enriching the content of the site while showcasing the students' academic achievements. The Web site includes artists' biographies, book reviews, and interviews, all of which we will be producing as assignments for this class.
*This class Meets CLA requirements for Cultural Diversity Theme, Other
Humanities Core, and Writing Intensive.*