31170 - Anglo-American Literature 2

Learning outcomes

Students will learn the literary history of the period at stake; they will acquire literary tools useful to analyze fictional productions and question them in relation to the complex and heterogeneous North American realities.

Course contents

Co-Futurisms: what does the future hold for historically oppressed groups?

Drawing on science fiction, fantasy, horror, uchronias, graphic narratives, and in dialogue with other media (music, cinema), this course investigates how historically oppressed groups have (re)imagined the past and the future. They often reclaim alternative timelines, mythologies, and technologies to address (present and past) discrimination, slavery, unjust incarceration, cultural genocide, intergenerational trauma, while advocating for climate and social justice, as well as fostering radical hope. Indeed, for many of these groups the apocalypse is not the product of an imaginative exercise, but it is grounded in History.

The first co-futurism to be studied was Afrofuturism, a term coined by Mark Dery in 1994. Since that moment the term futurism has been appropriated by other oppressed groups, such as Indigenous peoples, Asians and Latinx to articulate counter-hegemonic discourses. Therefore, in this course the term Futurism is employed to describe the speculative storytelling developed to address the dominant (literary, cultural, social, political) narratives. Students will learn to identify how writers such as Octavia Butler, Gerald Vizenor, Cherie Dimaline, Victor Lavalle (to name but a few), contributed/contribute to decolonizing traditional genres. Emphasis will be placed on marginal voices to stimulate a rethinking of Western (white-coded) literary canon.

These are some of the topics that will be addressed during the lectures:

• Counter-narratives: questioning the (white-coded) literary/literate canons.
• Co-Futurisms: origins and developments
• Time, Memory and Technology: Re-thinking ‘progress’ and (national / group / individual) ‘identities’.
• Evolving literary genres: recasting hauntings and horrors.
• Literature as a function: environmental justice, visionary futures, inalienable rights, sovereignty.

Please Notice: This course is organized as part of the sustainability phase of the European Project “PERFORMIGRATIONS: People Are the Territory”, in the frame of the research project “WeTell: Storytelling and Civic Awareness” (https://site.unibo.it/wetell/en) and in collaboration with the literary portal https://site.unibo.it/canadausa. The main goal is to encourage a new global mentality, deeply rooted in the humanities, so to reorient today geopolitics and create a happier and more just world. No knowledge is useful if it leads to satisfy only a few people’s urgent needs, be that material or emotional; knowledge is useful if it induces us to question our communal existence, helping us to learn how to act upon our community in responsible ways, in turn leading to a truly shared happiness.

Important: EVERYBODY IS WELCOME AND DIVERSITY (IN ALL ITS FORMS) IS WELCOME TOO.

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities: It is suggested that they get in touch as soon as possible with the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en ) and with the course directors in order to seek together the most effective strategies for following the lessons and/or preparing for the examination. Any specific requests must be made within 15 days of the exam date by sending an email to the instructor and cc'ing the email address disabili@unibo.it (for students with disabilities) or dsa@unibo.it (for students with DSA).

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliography for the Oral Exam

Primary Sources:

All students are invited to read at least three primary (only one can be an album or a movie) sources from the following list:

• Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979)
• Gerald Vizenor, The Heirs of Columbus (1991)
• Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (2017), Empire of Wild (2019)
• Cherrie L. Moraga, The Hungry Woman (2001)
• Donna Barba Higuera, The Last Cuentista(2021)
• Kiku Hughes, Displacement (2019)
• Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), Destroyer (2018)
• Sanford Greene, Chuck Brown, David F. Walker, Bitter Root (2018-2021)
• Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians (2020), Earthdivers #1–16 (2022–2024)
• Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch (2011), Black Panther: Long Live the King (2017)
• Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), The Deep (2019), Sorrowland (2021), Model Home (2024)

• Other Sources:

• Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid
• Ryan Coogler, Black Panther (2018), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Secondary Sources:

• Grace L. Dillon, Walking the clouds An anthology of Indigenous science fiction (2012), p.1-12
• Qiana Whitted, “To Be African Is to Merge Technology and Magic”: An Interview with Nnedi Okorafor, pp. 207-214
• Isiah Lavender III, Lisa Yaszek (eds.) Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century, part one 1-37.
• Isiah Lavender III, Afrofuturism Rising. The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (2019), pp.1-77.
• Conrad Scott, Anthologizing the Indigenous Environmental Imaginary: Moonshot Volume 3 and Ecocritical Futurisms pp.111-121.
• Julia Siepak, Speculative Landscapes of Contemporary North American Indigenous Fiction, pp. 122-132
• Chattopadhyay, B. (2021). Manifestos of futurisms. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 50(2), 8-23

An updated list of secondary sources will be made available at the beginning of the course on the Virtuale platform.

Teaching methods

The course consists of two weekly lectures. Attendance is not mandatory, but it is strongly encouraged. Lectures are opportunities for dialogue, discussion, and sharing critical thinking, because this is also what humanities are for: cultivating free will and creativity through dialogue between instructor and students

Assessment methods

The final exam consists of a 15/20-minute interview, during which students must demonstrate a good understanding of the topics covered in the course and prove their ability to critically read the selected literary works and contextualize them within the North American cultural context.

AI can be a useful tool to support individual study with in-depth analysis, summaries, and self-assessment tools. Since the final exam is an oral exam, AI is not used during the exam.

The oral exam requires reading of at least three primary sources (one of which can be from “Other sources”) and four secondary sources.

Teaching tools

The Powerpoint slides that will be shown during the course will be made available for students on the Unibo Virtuale platform

Office hours

See the website of Mattia Arioli