Migration and Space in American Culture - 3 creds., 2nd semester Dr. Jesús Benito Universidad de Valladolid Aims and ...
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Migration and Space in American Culture
3 creds.,
2 semester
nd
Dr. Jesús Benito
Universidad de Valladolid
jbenito4@fyl.uva.es
Aims and Objectives
From the outset of the American experience, national mythology in the US celebrated the restless
individualism of colonists, explorers, pioneers, soldiers, and immigrants who supposedly left home to never
look back. To this day, mobility, migration, resettlement, travel and the clashes and confluences of cultures
they bring about remain dominant issues in American culture and literature. This course proposes to
explore spatial mobility within and across the American social and cultural borders. Though the idea that
the United States is a "nation of immigrants" is one of the fundamental premises of American history, the
country has had a changing and uneasy relationship to its actual immigrants. Migrants were often perceived
as a threat, while their necessary contributions to American society was typically overlooked. The course
intends to provide a critical understanding of the long history of mobility and migration, both voluntary and
forced, in American culture, and of the variety of cultural and literary texts that respond to and reflect the
experience of space and movement within and across the American borders.
When students have successfully completed this course, they should be able to:
-- make informed and critical use of central terms like migration, diaspora, trans-nationalism, nomadism,
dislocation, cosmopolitanism and globalization as they relate to contemporary American experiences.
-- analyze the American experience of space through the use of recent philosophies of space (Bachelard,
Lefebvre, de Certeau, Castells, etc.)
-- examine how ideas and representations of immigration have shaped contemporary American culture.
-- explore the complexity of literary reactions to and representations of the experience of American
mobility.
-- demonstrate the ability to think critically about the diverse ways Americans have understood and
responded to migrants and the idea of migration.
-- trace the concept of migration in a variety of literary traditions in the US: Jewish, African American,
Chicano, Asian-American, etc.
-- generate critical ideas for analyzing contemporary mobility, migration and globalization processes in
the US and elsewhere.
Course Program
1. Mobility and/in Space, or Americans on the Move.
2. Migration, Dislocation, (Alien)Nation
Dr. Jesús Benito http://masterenglishstudies.eu
Departamento de Filología Inglesa. Universidad de Valladolid
Telf.: 983423000, ext. 4268 E-mail: jbenito4@fyl.uva.es
3. Occupying the Non-Place: New Geographies of Post-National Identity
4. The Spaces of Hospitality/Hostility: (Un)Welcoming the Other
5. Postapocalyptic Spaces
Required Readings
Week 1:
Stuart Hall, “Identity and diaspora”
Marc Auge, “Non-Places”
Deleuze and Guattari, “The Smooth and the Striated”
C. Ven, Identity, “Diasporas and Subjective Change”
Week 2:
- Anzia Yezierska, “America and I”
- Sui Sin Far, “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian”
- Hisaye Yamamoto, “Seventeen Syllables”
Week 3:
- Helena Viramontes, “Neighbors”
- Li Young-Lee’s “The Cleaving”
- Tomás Rivera, ...y no se lo tragó la tierra
Week 4:
- Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things
Week 5:
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
- Other texts to be determined.
Methodology
Class meetings will consist of lectures, group discussions, and oral presentations. The course will put
strong emphasis not only on oral discussions, but also on activities designed to stimulate the students’
critical thinking and writing skills. Since regularly we have an international mix of students in the course,
there will be ample opportunity for participants to share their own ideas and experiences of space and
mobility, and to bring these to bear on the analysis of American space.
Since the seminar room can only hold up to 12 students following the requirements of social distancing
while in class in the spring of 2021, if there are more students than that, the UVA students will follow the
course on site, while USAL students will follow the course through online streaming. A system of online
tutorials will also be available for both USAL and UVA students.
Assessment
A selection of texts (including but not limited to those indicated above) will be specified at the beginning of
the course for class discussion on given dates. Students are required to read each assigned text before class
and to come prepared to discuss it. In addition, each student will have to prepare an oral presentation.
The students will be evaluated on a combination of their participation in class, an oral presentation and
written assignments. There will be a final paper or project.
Dr. Jesús Benito http://masterenglishstudies.eu
Departamento de Filología Inglesa. Universidad de Valladolid
Telf.: 983423000, ext. 4268 E-mail: jbenito4@fyl.uva.esParticipation and oral presentation: 30%
Written Assignments: 30%
Final project 40%
Bibliography and Resources
Augé, Marc, 1992, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London and New
York: Verso.
Bachelard, Gaston, 1994 (1958), The Poetics of Space. Boston. Beacon Press.
Benito, Jesús, and Ana Mª Manzanas, 2003, Intercultural Mediations: Hybridity and Mimesis in American
Literature, Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Benito, Jesús, and Ana Mª Manzanas, 2011, Cities, Borders and Spaces in Intercultural American
Literature and Film, New York: Routledge.
Benito, Jesús, and Ana Mª Manzanas, 2014, Occupying Space in American Literature and Culture: Static
Heroes, Social Movements and Empowerment, New York: Routledge.
Castells, Manuel, 1977 (1972), The Urban Question. London: Arnold.
Certeau, Michel de 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall.
Deleuze and Guattari, 1992, (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London & New
York: Continuum.
Foucault, Michel, 1986, “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 22.7.
Glazer, Nathan, Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1970, Beyond the Melting Pot, Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Lefebvre, Henri, 1991, The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Blackwell: Oxford.
McNulty, Tracy, 2007, The Hostess: Hospitality, Femininity, and the Expropriation of Identity.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Molz, J. G. and Sarah Gibson, 2007, Mobilizing Hospitality: The Ethics of Social Relations in a Mobile
World, Burlington: Ashgate.
Olalquiaga, Celeste, 1992, Megalopolis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Parrilo, Vincent, 1996, Diversity in America, Pine Forge Press/ A Sage Publications Company,
Parrilo, Vincent, 1997, Strangers to These Shores. Race and Ethnic Relations in the United States. Boston -
London: Allyn and Bacon
Price, Patricia, 2004, Dry Place: Landscapes of Belonging and Exclusion. Minneapolis & London:
University of Minnesota Press
Rosello, Mireille, 2001, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest. Stanford: Stanford UP.
Soja, Edward, 1989, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory.
London: Verso.
Soja, Edward, 2000, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell
Tuan, Yi-Fu, 2008 (1977), Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis: U. Minnesota
Press.
Schedule
The course meets once a week, in the seminar room of the English Department. We will have at least 5
three-hour sessions, to be distributed in the five weeks of the third teaching period (second semester). The
schedule is posted on the Internet website for the master’s program ( http://masterenglishstudies.eu ).
Dr. Jesús Benito http://masterenglishstudies.eu
Departamento de Filología Inglesa. Universidad de Valladolid
Telf.: 983423000, ext. 4268 E-mail: jbenito4@fyl.uva.esAdenda Guía docente de la asignatura (2º Cuatrimestre del curso 2020-2021)
Adenda Guía docente de la asignatura (2º Cuatrimestre 2020-2021)
Asignatura Migration and Space in American
Culture
Materia Itinerario B: Literatura y Cultura – Modernidad y
Postmodernidad: Discursos y Culturas en Contacto
Módulo
Modernity and Postmodernity
Titulación Máster en Estudios Ingleses Avanzados:Lenguas y
Culturas de contacto (UVa/USAL)
Plan 2012 Código 53569
Periodo de impartición 2º cuatrimestre Tipo/Carácter Optativa
Nivel/Ciclo Curso 2020-21
Créditos ECTS 3
Lengua en que se imparte Inglés
Profesor/es responsable/s Jesús Benito Sánchez
Datos de contacto (E-mail,
Jbenito4@fyl.uva.es
teléfono…)
Departamento Filología Inglesa, UVa
Methodology:
Presentations of the course’s main contents, primarily teacher-based and often aided by visuals.
Classroom teaching will be replaced by a video presentation of the materials and theories for
each session, followed by the regular uploading of pdf files on Campus Virtual.
Student Workshops, text-centered discussions of two main types:
- Analysis and discussion of key theoretical texts, assigned to individual students. Each student
is required to do a video presentation with his/her critical assessment of the article discussed.
- Practical criticism and discussion of literary works & excerpts.
Classroom discussions will be replaced by the student’s submission of his/her brief critical
analysis of the text, that will be available at Campus Virtual.
There will also be a forum for the collective discussion of particular issues within selected texts.
Tutorials
All student queries will be submitted through the dedicated fora at Campus virtual. These
queries will be replied to everyday, either early in the morning or late in the evening.
Students will also be offered the possibility to have occasional one-on-one tutorials via Zoom or
Skype.
Evaluation
Participation in class: 30 % This participation includes activities online, participation in discussion
fora, etc.
Oral presentations: 30% To be sent as mp4 doc, and posted at Campus Virtual for all the students to
Universidad de Valladolid
1 de 2Adenda Guía docente de la asignatura (2º Cuatrimestre del curso 2020-2021)
have Access to them.
Final project 40% Written article to be returned to students with detailed feedback.
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