Course Description
Summary
Both Toni Morrison's and Octavia Butler’s novels push us to consider time differently. Rather than as static artifacts, both women’s characters treat time, memory, and history as malleable materials. Take Morrison’s idea of "re-memory" in her novel Beloved, for example, a vivid reliving of the past that seems more than memory itself, something closer to being transported backward through time. Or, consider Butler’s Kindred in which we literally shuttle backward and forward through time. These temporal glitches allow us to consider the possibility of changing the very metaphysical makeup of our world and intervening in history with newfound agency. We’ll read Morrison and Butler almost exclusively, working through 2-3 novels by each writer. Students will also author their own works of experimental writing that make use of the time travel strategies we discuss.
