Featuring English 165: Ethnic American Writers

This week I embark on a project I hope will prove to be a success. My hope is to feature some of the exciting and unique course offerings that are provided within the English Department, so as to show prospective students what they could do in their coursework and to celebrate what current English majors and minors and students outside of the department achieve in their English courses.

Professor Giaimo and students from ENG 165

American Ethnic Writers is one of the Department’s survey courses, which fulfills one of the Historical Survey requirements within the major. The class is intended to overview some of the many contributions that ethnic writers have made to contemporary American literature. The reading list this year includes Drown by Junot Diaz, Soldier by June Jordan, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and Who’s Irish by Gish Jen, among many more texts. 

Although the class may count towards the major and the reading load is intense, this semester’s class is full of a wide variety of students across a variety of disciplines, which speaks to the importance of the subject matter. As the professor of the course, Professor Genie Giaimo, said, Ethnic American Writers is a class about searching for origins. In this way, the stories of Ethnic Americans can connect us all, across discipline, across race, across culture, for aren’t we all in some way looking to understand why we are here and how we fit in to a larger narrative? Yet we cannot forget that Ethnic American authors also are writing about a controversial and fraught subject. Already the class has read articles on the immigration bans of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Eugenics movements of the early 1900s, and the recent controversial ethnic studies ban in Arizona. The fear of foreign influence still infects our political and national discourse. 

This past week the class discussed short stories from Drown by Junot Diaz. As the class broke out into sections, Professor Giaimo circulated among the groups and contributed to their discussions. My group focused upon “How to Date a Brown Girl, Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie.” Together with TA Ayesha Sindhu, we analyzed the short story, performing a close textual analysis in order to develop a short thesis regarding the story. Each student brought a different interpretation to the discussion; we were all fascinated by different aspects of the text. And the interests and topics that came out of group discussion grew exponentially when the class came back together. I am not sure if we will ever be able to complete the course work intended for one class session in English 165, but I think that speaks to the importance of American Ethnic Writers, and the richness of their texts, which are more than a site of academic interest; their work is significant to our everyday lives.