AML 3311 Spring 2022 Reed

What does it mean to be socially mobile in the United States? We often think it simply means working hard to transcend the limits of class. But American fiction is full of alternative versions of social mobility that raise important questions about how movements are generated, how people are mobilized, and how motion contributes to and subverts the notions of the nation. In this class we will explore a diverse set of literary texts that reveal contradictory and paradoxical attitudes toward social mobility. Some of our key questions will include: How do ideas of mobility and settlement condition the bloody conflicts of settler colonialism? How do the enslaved open up unauthorized fugitive passages to freedom? How do women confined to domestic roles mobilize for autonomy?