Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CrossCultural Encounters
Instructor: Dana Mihilescu (dmihailes@yahoo.com)
This course investigates different stances of ethno-racial identity configurations and cross-cultural encounters in
American literature throughout time, focusing on the relations between collective and individual memory and
trauma, mainstream and minority tensions, as well as ethno-racial and ethical dilemmas. The course looks at
identity as a contextually based-fluid category, the result of spaces of negotiation. By examining moments of
struggle and power imbalance in the relation between mainstream and minority groups, the course also explores
the fundamental role of literature in mourning and historical reparation.
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Theories of identity, assimilation, and ethnic writing in the U.S. [melting pot, 100% Americanism,
cultural pluralism, multiculturalism, affiliation / post-ethnicity; transcultural autoethnography, cultural zone]
David A. Biale. The Melting Pot and Beyond. Best Contemporary Jewish Writing. Ed. Michael Lerner. San
Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2001. 814.
Mary Louise Pratt. Criticism in the Contact Zone. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. New
York: Routledge, 1992. 112.
Matthew Frye Jacobson. Introduction. The Fabrication of Race. Whiteness of a Different Color. European
Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 112.
Case studies: Art Spiegelman, The Eye-Ball; Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993
Week 3: Ethno-racial Identity Configurations and the Work of Memory. Theoretical Considerations
Types of memory: Mieke Bal. Introduction. Acts of Memory. Cultural Recall in the Present. Eds. Mieke Bal,
Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer. Hanover: Dartmouth College University Press of New England, 1999. VII
XVII.
Postmemory and points of memory: Marianne Hirsch. Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the
Work of Postmemory. The Yale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 537.
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer. The Witness in the Archive: Holocaust Studies/Memory Studies.
Memory Studies 2.2 (May 2009): 151170.
Multidirectional memory: Michael Rothberg. Introduction: Theorizing Multidirectional Memory in a
Transnational Age. Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. 112.
Memory and the color line: W.E.B. Du Bois. The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto (1952)
Week 4: Performing Identities and Beyond: Power Fields, Norms and Ethical Openings of Acknowledged
Precariousness. Theoretical considerations
Michel Foucault. Morality and Practice of the Self. History of Sexuality Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure.
1984. Transl. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 2532.
Judith Butler. Precarious Life. Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso,
2004. 128151.
Leigh Gilmore. What Was I?: Literary Witness and the Testimonial Archive. Profession (The Modern
Language Association of America 2011): 7784.
Catherine Rottenberg. Performing Americanness. Performing Americanness. Hanover: Dartmouth College
Press, 2008. 115.
Week 5: Jewishness and American Mainstream Identity Configurations: Late 19th early 20th century:
Schreier, Barbara. Becoming American: Jewish Women Immigrants 18801920. History Today (March
1994): 2531.
Video: Making an American Citizen (1912)
Anzia Yezierska. Bread Givers (1925)
Week 6 Jewishness and American Mainstream Identity Configurations: Mid-twentieth century:
Delmore Schwartz. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities; America! America!