ENGL 6620 - Captivity and Poetics of the Undocument

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

M. Brady.

How does captivity structure belonging? How does captivity torque assemblage, citizenry, and structures of refusal such as maroonage? Captivity rebounds across and through U.S. literary history beginning with slave narratives and captivity tales and moving forward with the rise of labor and internment camps, reservations, boarding schools and onward to detention and deportation. How then does captivity inflect contemporary literature? In addition to early captivity and slave narratives, we will explore contemporary texts that ruminate on captivity including Fred Moten’s Huston’s Tavern, Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians, Melissa de la Cruz’s Something in Between, José Mateo’s Migrante, Junot Diaz’s Oscar Wao as well as theoretical work by Christina Sharpe, José Rabassa, Eduard Glissant, Christina Beltran, Katherine McKittrick, Dionne Brande, and Manuel de Landa.