Here is a final draft version of the syllabus for my S’21 course “Imagining ‘the Americas.'” The course engages the question of how conquest and the Middle Passage haunt the memory and history of the hemisphere, infusing our language of self, other, and community and the pathologies and fecundities of cultural production. Our assertion is a plain fact: “the Americas” is a phrase synonymous with trauma and loss. Conquest and the Middle Passage are originary events that set in motion particular, peculiar, and site-specific notions of memory and history. How to understand these origins and their ghosts is explored through critical essays, polemics, poetry, film, and novels that blend fiction and imaginative history.
Syllabus: Imagining ‘the Americas’
