Courses

(Seminar). These three major post-war American novelists are each challenging and transgressive in their own way; they comprise a natural grouping given their common preoccupations that grew out of high personal regard. Bellow and Ellison were close friends and Roth was a friend of Bellow's and a great admirer of Ellison. Indeed, Roth's The Human Stain is a sustained meditation upon and homage to Ellison's Invisible Man. These shared concerns include a resistance to the pressure to be representative of one's racial or ethnic group, skepticism of the political and ideological uses of art, and fascination with how an ethnic or racial outsider makes his way into WASP American high culture. One does so by a process of initiation that proceeds less by the sacrifice demanded by assimilation and more by playing the "game" of "appropriation" in which culture is conceived as public, open and accessible to anyone, and culture goods are available to be enjoyed and re-worked for one's own creative purposes. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Ross Posnock ([email protected]) with the subject heading "Bellow, Ellison, and Roth seminar." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.