TOPIC:  "FREEDOM"

In this course, we will examine the concept and value of freedom, as
it has both affected, and been transformed by, works of imagination.
Freedom has many different connotations, histories, and environments.
Inasmuch as it has been developed in tension with its opposites
(unfreedom, servitude, coercion, slavery), "freedom" has developed a
richly ambiguous resonance.  We will focus largely on the American
context, starting with the glaring contradictions to be found in
Thomas Jefferson's thought.  Expanding on the racial context so
determining for Jefferson, we will then look at some work by Frederick
Douglass, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, and Toni Morrison.  We will also
consider the concept of freedom as that has informed various
imaginative works focused on gender arrangements, looking at work by
Walt Whitman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Dorothy Parker,
Jane Smiley, or Marilynne Robinson.  We will also attend to the role
of freedom in a more or less contemporary economy defined by mobility
and consumption:  here we may read Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Mark
Leyner, or Don DeLillo.  I have listed more authors than we will have
time to read, of course.  Students should expect to read approximately
six novels and some shorter work over the course of the semester.  We
may screen a film as well.

Assignments will consist of regular writing, working from short
response papers to a longer analytical essay.  There will also be
occasional tests to encourage careful reading and attention to
lectures.