This tutorial focuses on American fiction of the late twentieth century, recognizing that in the history of American literature, landscape has consistently attracted significant literary, political, and social attention.  In the latter part of the twentieth century, increasing environmentalism alongside urbanization, immigration and continued sprawl dramatize and politicize the fictional debate about the virtues of city and country.  Previously marginalized populations claim a right to discourse about the American landscape and significant differences in class and privilege compete for representational authority.  Is the country a site for gentlemen's farming or the last bastion of rural culture?  Is the city the downtown of the elite or the new democracy of multicultural neighborhoods?  Although regional differences continue to contribute to perceptions of the American literary landscape, nationalizing and globalizing trends negate much of the power of difference.  All of these factors set up the question of the course:  How does fiction represent the American environment in the late twentieth century?  Examining works that portray a wide range of American landscapes, with frequent acknowledgement of the immigrant perspective, we will look at how a complex, dynamic, multicultural, and simultaneously urban and rural American culture defines itself and its sense of values against its landscapes.  Authors we may read include:  Paule Marshall; James Baldwin; Saul Bellow; Philip Roth; Alice Walker; Carolyn Chute; Joan Didion; Ernest Gaines; Dorothy Allison; Barbara Kingsolver; April Sinclair; Gish Jen; Sigrid Nunez; Colson Whitehead; Bharati Mukherjee; and others. There will be two extra, evening classes for presentations and a modest lab fee (less than $10.00) for photocopying.  Evaluation will be based on frequent response papers, two short papers, and an independent book project, as well as class participation.   Preference will be given to those students who have completed City/Country I or II.   

Level:   Intermediate.  Prerequisite:  Writing Seminar I (or the equivalent) and a previous literature
course or permission of the instructor.  Offered upon request.  Class limit 6.  *HS*       Lab fee $10.