HUMANS AND LITERATURE
Development of Modern Humans
Material list
Anemone, Robert L (2011) Race and Human Diversity A Biocultural Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall/Pearson
Description from ScholarWorks@WMU
Description
Race and Human Diversity is an introduction to the study of Human Diversity in both its biological and cultural dimensions. This text examines the biological basis of human difference and how humans have biologically and culturally adapted to life in different environments. It critiques the notion that humans can or should be classified into a number of "biological races".
Coverage includes discussion of the following topics:
Biological background of human variation
History of racial classification
A critique of the Race Concept
Ethnic disease: How race affects morbidity and morality
Adaptive dimensions of human variability: Life in the tropics, the arctic, and high altitude
Physiology of skin color
A critical history of attempts to link race and intelligence
Race as a cultural construct
Katanski, A. V. (2005). Learning to write "Indian" : the boarding-school experience and American Indian literature. Italy: University of Oklahoma Press.
Katanski is Associate Professor of English at Kalamazoo College.
Description from the publisher
Description
Katanski investigates the impact of the Indian boarding-school experience on the American Indian literacy tradition through an examination of turn-of-the-century student essays and autobiographies as well as contemporary plays, novels, and poetry.
Delpit, L. (2012). "Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People S Children. United Kingdom: New Press.
Description from the publisher
Description
As MacArthur Award–winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us—and as all research shows—there is no achievement gap at birth. In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during the school years that has eluded several decades of reform.
Sandel, M. J. (2009). Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?. United States: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Description from the Publisher
Description
What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict?
Michael J. Sandel’s “Justice” course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Up to a thousand students pack the campus theater to hear Sandel relate the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and this fall, public television will air a series based on the course. Justice offers readers the same exhilarating journey that captivates Harvard students. This book is a searching, lyrical exploration of the meaning ...
Reading list
Choose from the Reading list one book. How might the futurism genre impact cultural perspectives? Do you find futurism in the study of Anthropology?Based on the lecture, texts, ideas, and insights from our class please write 3 -5 pages on your book and your time here in class. This could be a paper on a new favorite book or new insights you have on cultural perspective. This is a (you-pick) the direction of your paper.
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
"When Aliens Land, What Will You Do?"
Nnedi Okorafor is an award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Born in the US to Nigerian immigrant parents, Okorafor is known for weaving African cultures into creative settings and memorable characters. Source: Google Books
Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
Autobiography - Richard Rodriguez has authored a “trilogy” on American public life and his private life—Hunger of Memory, Days of Obligation, and Brown—concerned, respectively, with class, ethnicity, and race in America. He has also worked as a journalist on television and in print. Most recently he wrote Darling, a meditation on the Abrahamic religions after 9/11. Source: Google Books
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
“But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.” The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison. Morrison was an African-American novelist, a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner whose works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States Source: Wikipedia
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Rudolfo Anaya was the professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico until his retirement in 1993. He has won numerous literary awards: the Premio Quinto Sol National Chicano literary award, the 2007 Notable New Mexican Award, and the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction for his novel Alburquerque. He is best loved for his classic bestseller Bless Me, Ultima. His other works include Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Jalamanta, Tortuga, Heart of Aztlan, and The Anaya Reader. He has also written numerous short stories, essays, and children's books, including The Farolitos of Christmas and Maya's Children. Source: Google Books
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
A new writer -
Rebecca Roanhorse is speculative fiction writer and Nebula, Hugo, and Sturgeon Award Finalist. She is also a 2017 Campbell Award Finalist for Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy writer. Source: Google Books
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler
Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a bestselling and award-winning author, considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. She received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded the prestigious PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), was praised both for its imaginative vision and for Butler’s powerful prose, and spawned four prequels, beginning with Mind of My Mind (1977) and finishing with Clay’s Ark (1984). Although the Patternist series established Butler among the science fiction elite, it was Kindred (1979), a story of a black woman who travels back in time to the antebellum South, that brought her mainstream success.