Tribe - Fictions of Contemporary American Social Life: course desciption
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James D. Wallace, Boston College
After one of the brutal encounters with strangers in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the nameless father and son engage in what has already become a familiar catechism:
You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?
Yes.
He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
Yes. We’re still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.
This exchange is the essence of “tribe,” with all the word invokes: loyalty to one’s home, family, ancestry, ethnic group, nationality, class, gender, race. The word also connotes strong emotional ties to the ethos, the customs and traditions, of a community, and the feeling of belonging that constitutes one’s sense of self. But “tribe” also connotes a suffocating insularity and raises issues of tradition, stability, and heritage versus independence, modernity and innovation. The pull of custom, ritual, myth can lead to stress, divided loyalties, conflict and the quest for resolution. This course considers the relevance of tribe to American social life through stories, dramas and novels by contemporary writers like Wakako Yamauchi, David Henry Hwang, and Luis Valdez. These represent a wide variety of allegiances to ethnic groups, sexualities, economic conditions, facticities, rebellions and dreams of liberation.
Classes are conducted as discussions of the assigned readings. There will be small-group presentations on topics like social issues, historical contexts, and authors’ lives. Writing assignments will consist of one short (5-page) mid-term paper, a longer (10-page) final paper, and a final exam.
You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?
Yes.
He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
Yes. We’re still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.
This exchange is the essence of “tribe,” with all the word invokes: loyalty to one’s home, family, ancestry, ethnic group, nationality, class, gender, race. The word also connotes strong emotional ties to the ethos, the customs and traditions, of a community, and the feeling of belonging that constitutes one’s sense of self. But “tribe” also connotes a suffocating insularity and raises issues of tradition, stability, and heritage versus independence, modernity and innovation. The pull of custom, ritual, myth can lead to stress, divided loyalties, conflict and the quest for resolution. This course considers the relevance of tribe to American social life through stories, dramas and novels by contemporary writers like Wakako Yamauchi, David Henry Hwang, and Luis Valdez. These represent a wide variety of allegiances to ethnic groups, sexualities, economic conditions, facticities, rebellions and dreams of liberation.
Classes are conducted as discussions of the assigned readings. There will be small-group presentations on topics like social issues, historical contexts, and authors’ lives. Writing assignments will consist of one short (5-page) mid-term paper, a longer (10-page) final paper, and a final exam.
No Preliminary knowledge is required for this course.
