ENGLISH Professor: Brian Norman Nobel laureate Salman Rushdie famously asks, "How does newness enter the world?" This seminar considers how literature creates meaning and its relationship to social change, from celebrated poetry of American social movements all the way back to when Plato kicked the poets out of his ideal Republic. We will read a wide variety of poetry and fiction with rigor and curiosity in order to appreciate both its mechanics and how writers dip into that rich tradition to help us attend to injustice in the world and perhaps imagine something new: the possibility of a just world. Further, we will consider literature’s role beyond the academic classroom through some local literary events and other outings. How and why does literature change us and the world? Let’s find out together. Brian Norman, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of English, director of African and African American Studies, and author of The American Protest Essay and National Belonging and Jim Crow in Post-Civil Rights American Literature. Originally from Oregon, he moved to Baltimore in 2008 to return to his liberal arts roots. | |