ENG 873 Seminar: Ellison and Warren
We will read the literary and historical essays, short stories, journalism, novels, and poetry of Ralph Ellison and Robert Penn Warren. The seminar will revolve around the question: What can we learn about American literature and culture during the Cold War and after by reading Ellison and Warren side-by-side? In the 1930s Ellison embraced Marxism and Warren was affiliated with the Southern Agrarians, but in subsequent decades both men moved away from their respective positions and explored the relationship between literature, identity, and American democracy. We will consider their writings in tandem with mid-century historical and political developments, including segregation, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, education, "the Sixties," and the Cold War, and consider the implications of their thought for American culture in the present. The interaction of these two minds with literature will be given pride of place in this seminar, and this interaction will be used to chart the aesthetic, political, and historical themes that run through the writing of Ellison and Warren.