ENG 764: Letters, Love, and Politics
Course Description:
In this life writing seminar, we will read letters (mostly contemporary)—written to or between friends, to family members, to lovers, to ‘āina, to peoples, to comrades or colleagues, to politicians, to publics. Some of these are written from prisons or jail; others from COVID-19 confinement; others from sites of siege, occupation, or settlerism, or in the face of other forms of state violence. Some of these letters are crafted to be works of literature; others are open letters written to publics; others still are private ones that have been collected, edited and published. Some are written by hand; some, via text or email or posted on social media; some, delivered orally; others, videotaped and performed. These letters, which come out of places including Turtle Island, Hawai‘i, and Palestine, partake in struggles against climate catastrophe, racism, colonialism, apartheid, sexual and gender violence, and violations of civil and human rights. Some are intimate, others are (also) part of movement-building or are (also) forms of public protest. In reading these letters, we will consider them as vehicles that powerfully evidence how the personal is political, and the political is personal. We will think about their affective power and about how and why this matters in fights for transformative justice. We will explore ethical questions that pertain to privacy. We will consider questions of genre and subgenres. We will think about how the letters participate in literary traditions and histories of protest—how they often are in dialogue with or build upon one another (for example, we will read Ta-nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me in relation to James Baldwin’s “Letter to My Nephew”). We will consider why letters constitute a particularly important and powerful genre (or genres) for those working in the Black radical tradition, in the #metoo movement, for prison abolition, in the struggle for a free Palestine, in decolonial world-making. We will consider the limits of letter writing as a form of activism or protest, and the possibilities letters hold to mobilize collective forms of change. As we consider reasons for the recent interest in letters for the role they play in political movements, we will consider how and why the intimacy of letters make them a powerful genre both for engaging in political protest, and also for imagining or building queer, feminist abolitionist and decolonial presents and futures.
We will situate our readings of these letters, most of which are contemporary, in relation to theoretical texts coming out of life writing studies that focus on topics including letters, individual and collective forms of agency and identity, political protest, prison writing, testimony and witness, and movement building. We also will contextualize the letters on the syllabus by reading theoretical works focused on abolition, affect, call-and-response, incarceration, settler colonialism, kinship, and decolonial love.
For this course, we will also engage in writing letters that are inspired by and that respond to the letters we will be studying: part of our study will happen through the writing of our own letters.
CONTENT WARNING: We will be studying, writing about and discussing texts that include descriptions of sensitive or disturbing topics (including colonial, antiblack, gendered and sexual violence), so please be ready for this in taking this class. Please also let me know at any point, either in office hours or via email, if you have any concerns.
Assignments:
Students in the class will write as well as read letters. In addition to a class presentation providing contexts for one of the class texts (10%), assignments will include biweekly letters to the class that take up the readings for that week (20 %), a 5-page letter that builds on and engages with course readings (15%), and a longer letter or set of letters at the end of the semester (20 pages) that doubles as a research paper (55%).
Full-length Texts:
Ta-nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Robin Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Rehearsals for Living
Imani Perry, Breathe
Shorter Text by Authors including: George Abraham and Sarah Aziza, Māhea Ahia and Cynthia Franklin, Hala Alyan, Devin Atallah, James Baldwin, Lia Maria Barcinas and Aiko Yamashiro, Tarana Burke, Seo-Young Chu, Ashon Crawley, Rachel Corrie, Patrisse Cullors, Susan Muaddi Darrag, Nichole Guillory, Tadhg Hickey, Sarah Ihmoud, Islah Jad, Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, June Jordan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Tammy Kremer, Marina Magloire, Nadine Naber, the Palestine Feminist Collective, Samih al-Qasim, Paris Rae, Barbara Ransby, Andrea Ritchie, Barbara Smith, Leny Strobel, Ahed Tamimi, Bassem Tamimi, Latoya M. Teague and Kenneth L. Johnson, Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate, Jessalynn Tsang and Yara Kodershahm, gloria j. wilson, et al.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Appreciation of how literary and cultural texts (letters in particular) participate in decolonial and abolitionist movements.
- Ability to situate your work within larger critical and theoretical conversations.
- Strengthened skills in close readings of literary and cultural texts.
- Strengthened skills in working across different academic disciplines.
- Advanced skills in analyzing the genre of the letter in relation to cultural and political contexts.
- Enhanced ability to craft a research paper, including developing a research question, formulating a compelling thesis, and choosing and analyzing sources to develop and strengthen your arguments.
- Enhanced ability to give oral presentations to peers that clearly convey a body of information and analysis.
- Experimentation with writing (about) theory, criticism, and cultural texts in creative ways, including through letter writing.
- Foundational knowledge about literature that takes up themes of colonial, racist and gendered violence (personal and collective, present-day and generational), and of abolitionist and decolonial love.
- Readings in contemporary settler colonial, Indigenous, queer, feminist and abolitionist theory.