Race and Time – ENGL 4550/AAS 4555/ENGL 6995/AAS 6995 (4 credits) Instructor: Shelley Wong

Spring 2016 - Wednesday 12:20-2:15 Rockefeller B16

This course will turn on three key terms: race, comparison, and time. What do these terms have to do with each other? What does it mean to be in time, or out of time? What are some other ways of inhabiting time, or of being inhabited by time? What is the time of the racialized subject? How might such a temporality be figured through literary representation? What is the time of comparison? What is the role of time in the racialization of institutional knowledge production? We’ll take up these and a host of other questions pertaining to the politics and poetics of time by working our way through writings ranging across the fields of the literary, anthropological, philosophical, linguistic, psychoanalytic, and sociological.

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Office Hours: Wednesday 3:00-4:00 Thursday 12:30-1:30 282 Goldwin Smith Hall (or by appointment)

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Required readings:

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son Carlos Bulosan, America Is In the Heart Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, DICTEE Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (the Grove Press edition translated by Charles Lam Markmann) Carolivia Herron, Thereafter Johnnie Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place Joy Kogawa, Obasan

Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine Additional readings (in the form of essays or excerpted writings) from some of the following authors will be available on Blackboard: Paul Ricoeur, Michael Hanchard, Cathy Caruth, Sigmund Freud, Ernst Bloch, Dipesh Chakrabarty, John Bender, David Wellbery, Jonathan Z. Smith, Rey Chow, Osamu Nishitani, Naoki Sakai, Natalie Melas, Walter Benjamin, W.E.B. Du Bois Course Requirements:

- regular and punctual attendance and active participation in seminar discussion (including one or two stints as a discussant for a presentation) (20%)

- one 15-20 minute oral presentation (10%) - informal writing assignments: two 2-page quick takes on a reading of your choice (these 2-

pagers may be used as the basis of, or incorporated into, one of your formal essays) (5%) - formal writing assignments: one 5-6 page mid-term essay (25%) and one 10-12 page term paper

(40%) - (please see me about the course requirements if you’re auditing the course, taking it S/U, or as an

English graduate seminar.)

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SYLLABUS (subject to change)

Week 1 January 27 – introduction Week 2 February 3 – chronopolitics - Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: chapter 1, “Time and the Emerging Other,” and chapter 5 “Conclusions” - Osamu Nishitani, “Anthropos and Humanitas: Two Western Concepts of ‘Human Being’” - Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World, chapter 1, “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness” (recommended)

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Week 3 February 10 – the time of comparison - Natalie Melas, “Versions of Incommensurability” - Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness” from Black Skin White Masks - W.E.B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” from The Souls of Black Folk - James Baldwin, “Introduction,” “Autobiographical Notes,” and “Stranger in the Village” from Notes of a Native Son Week 4 February 17 – chronotypes: the poetics and politics of form - Carlos Bulosan, America Is In the Heart - Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other, chapter 2 “Our Time, Their Time, No Time: Coevalness Denied” (recommended) Week 5 February 24 – narrating otherness - James Baldwin, “Many Thousands Gone,” - Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Idea of Provincializing Europe” from Provincializing Europe - Rey Chow, “The Secrets of Ethnic Abjection” and “On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem” - Johannes Fabian, chapter 3 “Time and Writing About the Other” (recommended) - Informal 2-page writing#1 due today Week 6 March 2 – time and the ethics of waiting - Joy Kogawa, Obasan - Sigmund Freud, excerpt from Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Cathy Caruth, selections from Unclaimed Experience Week 7 March 9 – waiting on futures and pasts - Joy Kogawa, Obasan - Ernst Bloch, selections from Heritage of Our Times - Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” Week 8 March 16 – event and happening - Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place - Informal 2-page writing #2 due today Week 9 March 23 – no class today - 5-6 page paper is due at 12pm on Friday, March 25th. Please email me a soft copy of your paper and leave a hard copy of it for me in my English Department mailbox (the mailroom is next door to the English Department main office at 250 Goldwin Smith Hall). Week 10 March 30 – spring break Week 11 April 6 – the time of the fathers - Carolivia Herron, Thereafter Johnnie

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Week 12 April 13 – the time of the fathers - Carolivia Herron, Thereafter Johnnie Week 13 April 20 –violence and futures 1 - Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine - Jonathan Smith, “A Slip in Time Saves Nine: Prestigious Origins Again” Week 14 April 27 – violence and futures 2 - Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower - (This class may have to be rescheduled and shifted to either Monday, April 25th or Tuesday, April 26th) Week 15 May 4 – time and translation - Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, DICTEE Week 16 May 11 – the time of the university - Naoki Sakai, “Dislocation of the West and the Status of the Humanities” - Osamu Nishitani, “Anthropos and Humanitas: Two Western Concepts of ‘Human Being’” - Rey Chow, “On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem” Week 17 May 17 – Term paper due today by 4:00pm. Please turn in a hard copy of the paper to my departmental mailbox and email me a soft copy of the paper. The mailroom closes at 4:30pm.