AML 5296 Spring 2022 Ribo

This course examines multi-ethnic literature as a field of scholarship with a particular institutional history in the United States. To that end, we will research and learn about the emergence of The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) in 1973. What literary works, scholarly questions, and historical circumstances shaped the founding of this organization and the journal it created? How did MELUS cultivate and shape studies of multi-ethnic literature in the U.S. and beyond? How have the organization, its journal, and the field evolved since their inception? What areas of multi-ethnic literary studies appear most promising and productive today? This survey of the history of the field will serve as the backdrop for the analysis of a wide variety of texts and media created by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American writers and artists. Close attention will be paid to intersections of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. In addition, the course will highlight quandaries raised by modernity/coloniality’s deep roots in settler colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.