English 211, Literature of Place: Great Plains Literature
Spring 2016
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
This course is an introduction to writers and literary works associated with the North American Great Plains. We will consider how oral and written literature maps the contested cultural, historical, and ecological layers of prairie places, especially in terms of human identity and belonging. We will pay particular attention to the gendered power and politics of literary representations of the Great Plains.
Course activities include participation in discussion, regular writing about the readings, and a cumulative final writing project. We will visit UNL’s Great Plains Art Museum for an exhibition and event on “From This Grass Earth,” and we may organize a field trip to nearby Spring Creek Prairie.
Course readings include Great Plains fiction, memoir and autobiography, journalism, essays, poetry and oral performance by diverse authors about rural and urban places. Books to purchase:
Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition, John G. Neihardt
The Tallgrass Prairie Reader, ed. John T. Price
As For Me & My House, Sinclair Ross, or Old Jules, Mari Sandoz
Wild Stone Heart: An Apprentice in the Fields, Sharon Butala
The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, Tim Madigan
Crazy Brave: A Memoir, Joy Harjo
…y no se lo tragó la tierra / …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Tomás Rivera
Dirt Songs: A Plains Duet, Twyla M. Hansen and Linda M. Hasselstrom