As Associate Professor of U.S. Literatures & Cultural Studies at Hampshire College, I teach my students that literary canons are arguments, and that the field of U.S. literatures has always been a battleground, and one that is multilingual and transnational, and as much engaged in settler colonialism and empire as in nation-building.
Close reading of texts remains the foundational skill of literary study, and I also insist on a cultural studies approach, which means exploring the contexts in which the texts were produced and read, both in their own time and since. Understanding context also means understanding power, and my courses explore how texts and canons have both shaped and contested dominant formations of power along the lines of nation, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.
The multiplicity invoked by my title ("U.S. Literatures") also accounts for the fact that “literature” is not one thing. Any reckoning with the literary history of the United States must include not only the canonized genres of novel, drama, and poetry, but also oral forms ranging from the sermon, to storytelling, to slam poetry, and “popular” forms and formats like speculative fiction, zines, and comics. Studying these different forms and formats requires students to pay attention to their distinct contexts of emergence, modes of circulation, and measures of value.