In any case, I just came across this graduate course at the University of Maryland being offered in Spring 2007 by Gene Jarrett. Here's the description, then a sentence or two on Gene.
ENGL748A / G. Jarrett
SEMINAR IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: TRANSNATIONAL AMERICAN LITERATURE. What does it mean to study American literature in terms of transnationalism? This course will examine recent Americanist scholarship on the so-called transnational imaginary, as well as transnational representations of cultural, ethnic, or racial similarity and difference in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. The contexts of comparative analysis include British culture, ancient Egypt, the Caribbean, Cuba and cosmopolitanism, anti-imperial internationalism, Afro-Orientalism, and Mexican borderland culture. The primary texts include Henry James's The American Scene, Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood, Claude McKay's Home to Harlem, Martin Delany's Blake, W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Princess, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter."
Gene is a dynamo, as his profile suggests. Back when I was an ABD and he was an undergraduate, he somehow talked Toni Morrison into offering a seminar on her own novels for selected undergraduate and graduate students (personally, I would have asked her for classics of African American lit, but I have to admit it was an amazing experience that only he could have initiated). We've pretty much been out of touch since then, or rather only in touch through mutual friends, but I'm glad to see he's teaching Hawthorne in what looks to be an amazing course (I guess The Marble Faun was too long and Anna Brickhouse's work on "RD" is perfect for what he seems to be shooting for). Here's hoping he posts a syllabus online soon!
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