This course introduces students to literary elements on the page with discussion of major theories and debates within the study of Caribbean literature and culture with a particular focus on the idea of “Chaos” (Braithwaite, Benitez-Rojo, Suzanne Césaire, Hopkinson, Browne, etc.). We will read novels, plays, poetry, and examine art and film that address the region’s unprecedented historical losses alongside its regenerative cultural production (i.e. Carnival, hip hop, ecotourism) to show how this flux shapes the modern Caribbean. We will survey and analyze how creatives construct both realist and speculative images that interrogate slavery, colonialism, extraction, and their afterlives into the future.

For those who declared in Fall 2023 or later, this course fulfills the following subject area requirement for the English major:
-Literature and the Social