Gloria Anazldúa - Borderlands / La Frontera (HW for April 27)

 The concepts of hybridity and border space presented by Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands: La Frontera / The New Mestiza (1987) are considered key themes in postcolonial studies., (ver aqui: http://www.qub.ac.uk/imperial/key-concepts/Hybridity.htm) and these can be related with "Third Space of enunciation" defined by Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1995).

"The intervention of the Third Space, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code. Such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the national tradition of the People. In other words, the disruptive temporality of enunciation displaces the narrative of the Western nation (...) as being written in homogeneous, serial time.
It is only when we understand that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in this contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation, that we begin to understand why hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or “purity” of cultures are untenable, even before we resort to empirical historical instances that demonstrate their hybridity."
Homi K. Bhabha.

Find and comment on examples of hybridity (in textual structure, narrative voice, themes addressed, and reproduced discourses) in the chapter of Borderlands to be read in class, and comment briefly on them.

HW for April 22: Linda Hogan's texts in dialogue with Gary Synder's "Unnatural Writing"

 In the essay “Unnatural Writing,” Gary Snyder proposes a few topics for a “New Nature Poetics.” Consider the following recommendation for an “art of the wild” — “That it study mind and language—language as wild system, mind as wild habitat, world as a ‘making’ (poem), poem as a creature of the wild mind” (p. 172, essay / p. 127 course anthology).

How can we relate Snyder’s invitation with Linda Hogan’s assertion in “Walking” — “I never learned the sunflower’s golden language or the tongues of its citizens. (…) But they knew what to do, how to live.” (p. 157, book / p. 115 course anthology).

    (image Chris Pappan, ‘Atom Heart Mother (Hearth)’, 2016, reproduced from https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/land-carries-our-ancestors-contemporary-art-native-americans)

HW for April 15: Laily Long Soldier, poem 38, pp. 49-53

Choose one or mor 

1. Is this a poem? What to make of the first line: "Here, the sentence will be respected?"

2. Relate the poem to the book cover below

3. If you have studied Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" in Leaves of Grass, can you establish any connection between the ending of "38" and these lines from section 52 of Whitman's poem? 

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles” (1338-39).

Guidelines for final project

 Your final project is a literary analysis project worth 25% of your grade, broken down into:

• 5% for the plan/proposal (your 300-word handwritten rationale by April 24)

• 10% for the process (your May 13 draft with about two-thirds of the paper)

• 10% for the final result (the June 1 submission, up to 2000 words)

What You Have to Do

1. Choose a primary literary text from your syllabus — but not the one you used for your oral presentation.

2. Select a major critical or theoretical text that engages with that literary work and a theme or question that interests you in it (for example, an essay, critical theory, or scholarly article researched in google scholar).

3. Summarize the critical author’s argument (what they say about the text and how they interpret it).

4. Respond to that critical perspective — using your understanding of both the primary text and the critical framework — to develop your own short analysis or argument.

5. Keep everything within 2000 words maximum.

The Rationale (for April 24)

You’ll need to handwrite a 300-word justification explaining:

• Why you chose this particular text and critic.

• What angle or question you want to explore.

• How this project connects to your interests or course themes.

AI Use and Academic Integrity

AI tools are discouraged for environmental reasons but their use as an auxiliary is not forbidden.
You may use them if you cite the assistance properly using APA’s guideline for generative AI citations (e.g., Perplexity, powered by GPT-5, chat on plan proposal for final assignment, April 2026, https://www.perplexity.ai/search/25-5-plan-proposal-10-process-HiAddwVBQ8qTZeF1Au0MRA).
Also, your text should remain primarily your own: less than 35% AI-typical phrasing (which the teacher will verify with an IA-pattern recognition tool)

Native-Americans in the US: Key Dates leading to "Red Power" and "Native-American Renaissance"

1824 - Creation of the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs)

1830 - Indian Removal Act

July 1845 - phrase "Manifest Destiny" is coined

1851 - Indian Appropriations Act (allocating funds to move to Western reservations)

1864 - Sandy Creek Massacre

1871 - rider to Indian Appropriations Act: no recognition of additional Native tribes or subsequent treaties

1876 - Battle of Little Big Horn

1890 - Sitting Bull is killed; Wounded Knee Massacre

1907 - Charles Curtis becomes the first Native American US Senator (will later become vice-President in 1929)

mid 20th century: federal policies aimed to dissolve tribal status and move Native people into cities, producing dislocation - indeed, these were so-called termination policies— but also intertribal urban networks; meanwhile the repressed anger of Native Americans found activist echoes in the Civil Rights and Black Power movement, fueling the emergence of a "Red Power Movement"

1961: American Indian Chicago Conference and Declaration of Indian Purpose

1968 - Indian Civil Rights Act by President Lindy Johnson, proposes that "termination" be replaced by "self-determination" but authorizes governmental agency over the jurisdiction of the tribes, in order to protect individual Indians from arbitrary and unjust actions of tribal governments." This creates resentment.

In 1968, also, the AIM (American Indian Movement) is founded. 

1969: Occupation of Alcatraz; Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn wins the Pulitzer Prize and great visibility is given to. Native-American Renaissance: read more about it here http://nativeamericanlit.com/

[see powerpoint on moodle for more details on the Red Power Movement and the Native-American Renaissance]

and finally, one  century's most well-known Native American writer (Sherman Alexie) — see what he has to say about his tradition:

HW for April 8: Leslie Marmon Silko, "Storyteller" (anthology, pp. 67-86)

 To situate "Storyteller" and the groundbreaking work of the same title that launched Leslie Marmon Silko as a major US writer, you might want to know a little about the emergent acknowledgment of native-American literature in the native-American Renaissance (a controversial though widespread term) here: https://nativeamericanlit.com/.

As you read "Storyteller", please take your time to comment on one or more of these topics:

- intertwined narratives
- Focalization
- Description of natural elements
- Dramatization of cultural mediation and conflict

HW for March 23 - Hai Dang Phan's poems (anthology, pp. 59-66)

 For next class, we will have a guest teacher, Maria Caroliina Vaz de Almeida, who has kindly prepared these questions for you:

1. In a 2021 article, Hai-Dang Phan mentions the centrality of An-My Lê’s photography to his poetry, remarking that it has allowed him to “reckon with my own thoughts and feelings toward war and conflict, dislocation and exile–and above all toward our shared experience of leaving Vietnam as refugees and growing up in the United States.” Succinctly, An My-Lê’s photography can be interpreted in light of thetransposition of time and space from the Vietnam War into the American landscape through the civil reenactments of the war. Either:

a) Select and comment on one of An-My Lê’s photographs from the collection Small Wars (1999-2002), which you can find here: Small Wars — An-My Lê.

b) Discuss Hai-Dang Phan’s poem “Small Wars” in comparison with An-My Lê’s photograph entitled Rescue (for example, the significance of usingdifferent artistic mediums, the continual process of reenactments, the use of rhetorical devices like Ekphrasis, or others).You can find Phan’s article here, if you would like to read it: Speak, Reenactment | Hai-Dang Phan.

2. Hai-Dang Phan’s work also engages with the turmoil of adopting and writing in the language rooted in the cause of the exodus, seeking to connect geographical dismembering with linguistic disruption. “My Father’s Norton Introduction to Literature, Third Edition (1981)” incorporates and quotes directly from multiple sources of the American and English literary tradition. Either:

a) Identify one of the poems, short stories, or plays referenced in the poem and discuss its significance within the context of Phan’s poem.

b) Comment on the poem’s dialogue with the American and English literary tradition, namely, how the linguistic and literary hybridization further challenges the boundaries of national literature.

phtos by An-My Lê