In fulfilling this requirement, students will focus on cultural diversity in the United States by studying one or more of the following topics: indigenous cultures, the history of race in America, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African-American culture and literature, Asian-American culture and literature, Latinx (including Afro-Latinx and critical Latinx indigenous studies), and diasporic voices. While many courses in the English department include writers and artists of color, the courses meeting this requirement focus primarily on the creative and critical work associated with historically marginalized traditions and disenfranchised groups, with voices that contest, or dissent from, dominant discourses and frameworks of knowledge. Courses meeting this requirement are often cross-disciplinary, placing in conversation different mediums and fields of inquiry such as history, sociology, religion, film and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, comparative race studies, border and migration studies, and others.
Examples of courses routinely offered in the English Department that would fulfill this requirement:
- Wakanda Forever
- Language in Immigrant America
- Adichie and Her Contemporaries
- Vietnam War in Literature and Film
- Introduction to Asian American Literature
- Reading Chinua Achebe
- Contemporary Southern Literature
- Remembering the Middle Passage
- African Diaspora Literature
- Migration Narratives
- America Dreams Chinese Movies
- Music and African-American Literature
- Zora Neale Hurston
- Baldwin and Morrison
- Toni Morrison