ENG 417SEM—Studies in American Literature

The content of this course is variable. Selected topics in American literature, including attention to critical questions at the forefront of current criticism in American literature and American studies. For example: Prof. J. Conte: Literature of Immigration The path of immigration to the United States extends from the halls of Ellis Island to the globalized migration of the twenty-first century. First generation immigrants are often drawn to these shores by the blight of poverty or religious/political persecution; hope to make for themselves a fabled but often fictitious better life: and are riven between the desire to retain old world customs and the appeal of new world comforts and technological advances. Second-generation immigrants face the duality of a national identity striving to become recognized as real Americans and an ethnic heritage that they wish to honor and sustain but which marks them as always an other. Then there are the natural-born American citizens. The third-generation descendent will have only indirect or acquired familiarity with his or her ethnic heritage: the loss of language and a multi-ethnic identity.