The class will begin with a short story from Zora Neal Hurston in order to foreground the relationship between language and identity. By situating her in the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of Black letters more broadly, we will ask why she chooses to use black vernacular in her writings? Specifically, what are the political limits and enablments of such an aesthetic practice?
    My polemical aim is to place alternative vocabularies and grammatical structures in conversation with “Standard English,” hopefully denaturalizing the latter. Given that the class is for Education majors, my goal is to make these future teachers reflect on their profession so that what they teach is neither given nor unsullied by political implications.

    The second round of reading will be the introduction to Anderson’s Imagined Communities. This is an obvious starting place for thinking about how national identity is thought. (I concede that a proper examination of “nationalism” could/ should begin with earlier writings, but I am limited by the potential reading difficulty of such texts and, more importantly, my lack of comfort with those materials–––recently ordered edited collections and readers on the topic should help my understanding). After discussing Anderson, however, I am unsure how to order the texts and what follows is an attempt to think through my options.


Within National/ Continental boundaries:
    

    Midnight’s Children: Considering Anderson will be fresh in our minds, Saleem’s psychic connection with his nation-state seems like a good starting point. We would be forced to think through the ‘birth’ of a nation, and national consciousness, and the violence proper to such an event. Indeed, the simultaneous arrival of East and West Pakistan may help me disenfranchise the nation as the natural telos of particular spaces and their constituents. (Perhaps assigning the film Gandhi will help build an affective relationship to India and its struggle for independence. Perhaps too, America’s founding fathers can also be rethought as the “revolutionaries” they were in these conversations). Saleem’s psychic ability also has the merit of attempting to unite an incredible range of languages, classes, religions, castes, and political situations. His endeavor’s problems and successes should help us approach a central problem of national identity; how are multiple realities framed so that fellow feeling and even solidarity is possible?
    (A secret benefit for me: I am working on a paper about Midnight’s Children and will have recently finished it when this unit begins).  
    At a very practical level, the girth and difficulty of Rushdie’s text will scare off those looking for easy ways to fulfill credit requirements. Also, saving a text of this magnitude for the semester’s end, a possibility if I organized the readings temporally, will add lead weights to our legs as we try to sprint to a finish.


Third Section: Thinking Modernity and the Colonial Project:
    

    The political reading for this section is yet to be determined, although Said, Bhabha or Lenin would do well.
    Henry James’ short story “The Real Thing” will introduce the aesthetic readings for this section. The narrative, as I will frame it, helps understand the political and social ruptures created by modernity. Most importantly, I am concerned with a disappearing aristocracy, the flow of peoples across borders, the reevaluation of Englishness (or the metropole more generally), and the ways one can represent such changes. All of these issues are available in James’ story and will set up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness well.
    I will use Conrad’s work to demonstrate the logic and vocabulary of the colonial project. In terms of nationalism, I will probably frame this as both the (English) civilizing mission and defining the Self in opposition to the Other. Following James’s work, we can also see how colonial administrators and the goods they are pillaging/ exporting belong to a rising middle class, defined both economically and culturally. Administrators, like Kurtz, can have bright futures by helping manage the periphery and their success will allow them comfortable living when they arrive home. Moreover, the goods they procure, ivory in this case, are part of consumption practices based on imports that are alive and well today. Finally, I would like to assign “Apocalypse Now” to bring the discussion “home.” Putting Iraq, Vietnam, and the Belgium Congo into conversation should be an interesting way to interrogate notions of ‘national progress’.
    We can also use this conversation to discuss the value and limitations of comparisons, both the ahistorical models deployed in mainstream media and the historically grounded analysis modeled by the class.
    On consideration, perhaps a reading of “race theory” or the “hierarchy of nations” from the late 19th/ early 20th century will give us a taste of the intellectual milieu in which these texts operate. Then again, I have to keep in mind that the class’ reading level and my own desire may not synchronize.


Fourth Section: Expatriate/ Comparative Nationalisms
    

    Again, I am uncertain which political text to use or if there should be one at all. Although the frame for the class is nationalism, I would like to provide my students with narrower and historically particular lenses through which they can read the text. Considering the primary reading for this section is Claude McKay’s Banjo, I would do well to get advice form Af-Am specialists.
    So, Banjo: I’m excited about teaching this text because student perspectives will help me think through the work. Amongst the many strands to be teased out, first is the return to a focus on language. Like Hurston, McKay’s language vocalizes a particular political project; returning to this issue will be particularly interesting after reading Conrad and interrogating colonialist vocabulary. Second, there are voices for diasporic consciousness within the text, many of which are Garveyite; the “race man” then envisions solidarity along particular lines but, according to a few voices in the text, the ultimate aim is to create an independent nation. Here is an opportunity to compare race solidarity and nationalism.
    Thirdly, Banjo also questions how marginalized peoples relate to different nationalisms. The protagonist vagabonds (itself an interesting term) are expatriates of various nations or colonies and are bombarded by French citizens deluded with their own claims of tolerance. These claims cannot be entirely dismissed but, like the condemnation of American culture that accompanies them, cannot be swallowed whole either. Exploring the tension between these competing visions will, I hope, provide us with a transnational perspective that holds multiple nations and multiple modes of unity in view. Again, I am interested in foregrounding the various Americas the text offers, including different understandings of the United States (“United Snakes” according to one character) and the “Americas” writ large––Ray, after all, is West Indian.