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Course Description

Summary

The American South, with its complex and difficulty history, has long given rise to voices both lyrical and confessional, empathic and dangerous, realistic and strange. Rooted in this landscape's shifting racial, domestic and socio-economic identity, we will explore the grand and problematic tradition of U.S. Southern Literature from the Civil War to the Present. Writers to be discussed include Flannery O'Connor's classic short stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge, several of Faulkner's short novels including As I Lay Dying, Outer Dark, and his little known early work November. We will discuss the audacity and hardship of Barry Hannah in his much lauded collection Airships as well as his brief novel Hey Jack! We will revel in the linguistic velour of Frank Stanford's epic poem Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You and the haunted and speculative elements of Octavia Butler's Kindred. The course will end with an examination of contemporary Southern voices.