American Narratives of Homelessness. Literary Anthropology

foreign languages
general courses

Level of English needed for participation in the course is B2 or higher.

Classroom

The first three meetings of the course will be devoted to the concept of literary anthropology. During the remaining time we will have an opportunity to practice literary anthropology while reading texts presenting homeless people in the U.S.: novels, documentaries, ethnographies and homeless people’s life writing, including blogs. We will analyze how homeless people are portrayed in American culture, what kind of stories are told about them and how those unhoused narrate their lives. We will seek answers to several questions. Do homeless authors repeat narrative conventions about homelessness, do they alter them, do they create different narrative formats? How do unhoused writers create their identities? What values and beliefs do they express? What do narrative conventions have to do with social change?

The course discusses literary anthropology as an interdisciplinary method of cultural analysis. Students will understand literary qualities of anthropology as well as anthropological features of narratives. At the beginning we will read theoretical works by James Clifford, Mrylin Cohen, Dominka Ferens and Jerome Bruner. Next we will focus on American narratives of homelessness and try to trace traditional narrative forms as well as discover their alternations in contemporary stories about and of unhoused people. The course presents several types of narratives: from rags to riches, tramp autobiography, activist narrative and discusses them in the context of testimony. One of the meetings is devoted to citizen journalism. Students will have a chance to become familiar with voices of those usually marginalized, since we will read not only about homeless people, but also analyze their own words expressed on their blogs, in books, in a comic book, or in the interviews they gave journalists and random citizens. Course literature includes works in literary and cultural theories, novels, reportages, ethnography, graphic novel, documentary movies, blogs and photography.

We will ponder on connections between narratives and possibility of cultural and social change.

Apart from regular participation in class discussion and giving a presentation in order to pass the course you can either write a classic academic essay or contribute to literary anthropology with your own short story or a reportage about homelessness in Warsaw or the place of your origin.

The course is recommended for those interested in American culture, cultural studies, literature, cultural anthropology, ethnography, journalism, social justice and social change.

Your level of English should be B2 or higher.

Trigger warning:

Please, note that the course is concerned with difficult life situations and traumatic experiences of homeless people including sexual harassment, rape, physical and psychological abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse.

Alger, Horatio. 1868/ 2002. Ragged Dick. PolyGlot Press. Available at Project Gutenberg (fragments)

Allen, John. 2004. Homelessness in American Literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony. Routledge. (selected chapters) Anderson, Nels. 1923 / 1967. The Hobo. Sociology of the Homeless Man, The University of Chicago Press. (Introduction, “Hobohemia” and the 2nd part)

Bruder, Jessica. .2017. Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century. W.W. Norton & Company Inc. (chapters: 4,5)

Bruner, Jerome. 2001. „Self-Making and World-Making”. Narrative and Identity edited by James Brockmeier and Donald Carbaugh. Jon Benjamin Publishing Company.

Clifford, James. 1986. “On Ethnographic Allegory”. In .Writing Cultures. The Politics and Poetics of Ethnography edited by James Clifford & George Marcus, 98-122. University Press Berkely.

Cohen, Marylin.. „Introduction: Anthropological Aspects of a Novel”, Marylin Cohen (ed.) Novel Approaches to Anthropology. Contributions to Literary Anthropology, 1-26. Lexington Books 2013.

Felman, Shoshanna, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony. Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Routledge. (the first two chapters)

Ferens, Dominika. “Intersections of Literature and Ethnography in the United States / Prolínání Literatury a Etnografi e ve Spojených Státech Amerických.” Český Lid 103, no. 3 (2016): 371–418. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26426196.

Landowne, Youme, and Anthony Horton. 2008. Pitch Black. Don’t Be Skerd. Cinco Puntos Press. (graphic novel)

London, Jack. 1907 / 2005. The Road. Project Gutenberg e-book.

National Coalition for the Homeless. “STUDENT HOMELESS CHALLENGE PROJECT. Marking the Ability to Successfully Survive the Harsh Conditions of Life on the Streets”. National Coalition for the Homeless.

Rameau, Max. 2008. Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown. AK Press. (selected chapters)

Riis, Jacob. 1890. "Street Arabs". In How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New York.. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Project Gutenberg.

Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador (selected chapters)

FILMS, BLOGS, PHOTOGRAPHY

Cody, Mark, dir. Umoja Village. Available at YouTube

Heffron, Richard T., dir. Samaritan: The Mitch Snyder Story. 1986. Fries Entertainment / LeVine-Robins Productions; available at YouTube Horvath, Mark. Invisible People TV.(videoblog)

Levin, Peter, dir. 2003. From Homeless to Harvard (available at YouTube)

Rader, Ruth. Ruthie in the Sky, http://ruthiessky.blogspot.com/.

Riis’s, Jacob. photographs, Museum of City of New York: http://collections.mcny.org/Explore/Highlights/Jacob%20A.%20Riis/

Sheptock, Eric. TickTock Sheptock [blog], http://streatstv.blogspot.com/

Singer, Marc, dir. Dark Days. 2000; Picture Farm Production; available at https://lookmovie2.to/movies/view/dark-days-2000

+ street photography presenting homeless people on Flickr and YouTube videos made by random American citizens that registered their conversations with homeless people

Zhao, Chloe. 2020.Nomadland.

Knowledge

Students understand specificity of literary anthropology and selected literary theories about cultural and social content in a text (Ferens, Bruner) as well as reflexive turn in cultural studies and anthropology (Clifford).

Students know:

- selected types of narratives about homelessness characteristic to American culture;

- aesthetics of Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism often present in American stories about homelessness.

Skills

Students are able to use methods of literary anthropology and analyze contemporary narratives about homelessness published in the US..

Social Competences

Students are able to critically perceive American media coverage of homelessness and narratives about homeless people.

Students are able to express and defend their opinion about problems of representation of homeless people in the US..

Students respect homeless people.

- Participation in class discussion – 20% of the final grade

- Presentation (10-15 minutes) – 30% of the final grade

- Essay ( 6-8 pages) or a project ( a contribution to literary anthropology with a text about homelessness in Warsaw or in a student’s place of origin) – 50% of the final grade

Grading: 100-88/5; 87-73/4; 72-57/3; 56-0/2