Course Calendar

Readings not linked to below can be found on our Canvas course site. Go to Files > course readings.

The most accurate and up-to-date version of this calendar can be found on this site. Use this online calendar to check on reading assignments and other due dates, rather than the pdf or paper version of our syllabus, since those versions of the syllabus will not be updated throughout the semester.

I reserve the right to change the course calendar as needed; adequate advance notice will always be given of any changes.

Week 1

Monday, January 22

Introductions
We will read selections from “Just Memory,” Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen in class (you do not need to read this before class)

Wednesday, January 24

Henry Luce, “The American Century,” Life, February 1941
Selections from William L. Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (1951, 1970), “Introduction,” and part of “Part I: The Opening Statement” (pgs xiv-xvi, 3-15 to “Incitement to Genocide”)

Week 2

Monday, January 29

Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground (1941), “Prefatory Note,” Part One and Part Two (pgs xi-129)

Wednesday, January 31

Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground (1941), Part Three (pgs 133-159)
Imani Perry, “The Bleak Prescience of Richard Wright”, The Atlantic (June 2021)

Week 3

Monday, February 5

John Okada, No-No Boy (1957), Foreword, Introduction, Preface, Ch 1-3 (pgs vii - 63)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Executive Order No. 9066” (1942)
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, “FDR and Japanese American Internment” (1941-2)

Wednesday, February 7

John Okada, No-No Boy (1957), Ch 4-5 (pgs 64-105)

Week 4

Monday, February 12

John Okada, No-No Boy (1957), Ch 6-9 (pgs 106-189)
William Petersen, “Success Story, Japanese-American Style,” The New York Times Magazine, January 9, 1966

Wednesday, February 14

John Okada, No-No Boy (1957), Ch 10-11, Afterword (pgs 190-232)

Friday, February 16

Close Reading Essay 1 due

Week 5

Monday, February 19

NSC 68, “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security” (April 14, 1950), pgs 60-66 (Conclusions, Recommendations)
Toni Morrison, Home (2012), Ch 1-7 (pgs 3-84)

Wednesday, February 21

Toni Morrison, Home (2012), Ch 8-17 (pgs 85-147)

Week 6

Monday, February 26: NO CLASS - February break

Wednesday, February 28

Paul Goodman, “A Young Pacifist” (1967)
James Baldwin, “The War Crimes Tribunal” (1966)
Jeremiah Kim, “I Am Not Your American: Reviving James Baldwin’s Opposition to U.S. Empire,” Cornell Daily Sun, Oct 10, 2018, https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/2018/10/10/on-my-mind-i-am-not-your-american-reviving-james-baldwins-opposition-to-u-s-empire/
Angela Davis, “The Liberation of Our People” (1969)
“Vietnam: The War at Cornell” (2015) (10:57), http://static.as.cornell.edu/150/vietnam.html
- This video is positioined on the page under the heading “The Vietnam War on Campus, Revisited”
Recommended: Newsreels on anti-Vietnam War protests in 1967 and 1968:
- April 18, 1967 (2:08 min), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB0CNTdYOXE
- Anti-Vietnam Protests at DNC, Aug 28, 1968, ABC News (3:51 min) https://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/aug-28-1968-anti-vietnam-protests-10690501

Week 7

Monday, March 4

Tim O’Brien, “How to Tell a True War Story,” from The Things They Carried (1990)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, “On True War Stories,” from Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016)

Wednesday, March 6

Gwendolyn Brooks, “the mother” (1945), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43309/the-mother-56d2220767a02
Anne Sexton, “The Abortion” (1962), http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/anne_sexton/poems/18154
Anne Sexton, “Menstruation at Forty” (1966), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42572/menstruation-at-forty
Lucille Clifton, “the lost baby poem” (1972), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53239/the-lost-baby-poem

Friday, March 8

Close Reading Essay 2 due

Week 8

Monday, March 11

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “Introduction: This Land,” from An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), pgs 1-14
Selections from Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” from Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), pgs 46-59; reprinted in Americanizing the American Indian: Writings by “Friends of the Indian,” 1880-1900, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (1973)
Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, “Indian Education: A National Tragedy – A National Challenge” (1969), Foreword and Summary (pgs ix-xiv)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977), pgs xi-26 (including Preface and Introduction)
- Start with Preface, end with “So he scratched a hole in the dry sand beside him, and when the glare of that light finally blinded him, he turned to his right side and vomited into the hole.”

Wednesday, March 13

Library session in Uris Library Classroom B05: Please bring a laptop with you to class.
- Our class will meet today in Uris Library Classroom B05. Here’s how to find the room: The easiest way to find it is to enter through the doors beneath the clock tower – don’t mind the scaffolding – walk through the contactless pickup room and take an immediate left as you exit it. The Classroom is right there. You can also reach it via the main Uris entrance: from the Uris lobby, take the staircase down to the next level and walk straight to the end of the hall. There are signs along the way.
Please read through the Historical Context Essay assignment before class.

Week 9

Monday, March 18

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977), pgs 27-85
- Start with “When he got off the train at New Laguna, his legs were shaky…” and end with “…‘Pepper got run over on the highway, chasing some she-dog in heat’.”

Wednesday, March 20

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977), pgs 85-186
- Start with “He remembered when his mother died,” and end with “…maybe it would be too much trouble, and they would let him go.”

Week 10

Monday, March 25

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977), pgs 186-244
- Start with “Black pebbles and the ancient gray cinders the mountain had thrown poked into his backbone,” and end with “Sunrise, / accept this offering, / Sunrise.”
Paula Gunn Allen, “Special Problems in Teaching Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony”, American Indian Quarterly 14.4 (1990): 379-386
Central research question for historical context essay due by class

Wednesday, March 27

Historical context essay workshop

Friday, March 29

Historical Context Essay due

Week 11

Monday, April 1: NO CLASS - Spring break

Wednesday, April 3: NO CLASS - Spring break

Week 12

Monday, April 8

Lisa Duggan, “Neoliberalism,” from Keywords for American Cultural Studies, 3rd edition (2020)
3 articles from LA Times in 1990 on then-police chief and founder of “D.A.R.E.”, Daryl Gates:
- “Casual Drug Users Should Be Shot, Gates Says” (Sept 6, 1990)
- “‘Yeah, I Mean It!’ Gates Says of Idea to Shoot Drug Users” (Sept 8, 1990)
- “Police Board Won’t Probe Gates Furor…” (Sept 19, 1990)
Emma Roller and National Journal, “How Congress Helped Create Ferguson’s Militarized Police,” The Atlantic, August 14, 2014
Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993), “Three Reads,” Ch 1-6 (pgs vii-76)

Wednesday, April 10

Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993), Ch 7-13 (pgs 77-149)

Week 13

Monday, April 15

Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993), Ch 14-19 (pgs 154-244)

Wednesday, April 17

Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993), Ch 20-25, “A Conversation with Octavia E. Butler” (pgs 245-341)

Friday, April 19

Final Essay Proposal due

Week 14

Monday, April 22

Joe Sacco, “Trauma on Loan,” The Guardian, January 20, 2006
Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times Magazine, May 23, 2004
- Note: I’ve included a pdf of this article as it originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine in our course readings. It includes images of torture, but the pdf I’ve provided has a very low reproduction quality, so the images are fuzzy, black, and difficult to see. This is by design.
Judith Butler, “Torture and the ethics of photography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space vol. 25 (2007): 951-966

Wednesday, April 24

Hassan Blasim, “The Iraqi Christ” and “A Thousand and One Knives,” from The Corpse Exhibition (2014)