Immigrant Exp. Thru Lit. & Art

Full Course Title: 
Immigrant Experience Through Literature and Art

Focusing on the immigrant experience in the United States (with an emphasis on contemporary art and supplemental historical contexts), this course will explore how we perceive, respond to, and express cultural identity. In order to gain perspectives on the experiences and challenges of diverse communities, we will examine a variety of works by Native American, Hispanic American, African American, Asian American, and Palestinian American citizens. Source materials will be varied, ranging from literary and visual arts, to advertising, film, and electronic media. We will also consider how certain “hybrid” art works (such as graphic novels, documentary films, or photo-journalism) cross traditionally “distinct” or “separate” boundaries between strategies of expression. In so doing, students will explore the ways that artistic expression is a means to understand others and ourselves and how we form communities. Coursework will focus on class participation (stemming from in-depth group discussion and collaborative work); written essays and responses (including individual analyses of specific works, creative responses, and peer responses); and a final group research project (to be written and presented collaboratively) on a chosen topic that speaks directly to issues of immigration. Each assignment is tailored to encourage and challenge students to articulate their own ideas, make connections to current events in the political and social spheres, and respond effectively to the thoughts and ideas of their peers.

Course Details
Prefix: 
UCO
Course Number: 
1200
Section Number(s) and Day/Times Taught: 
155: TR 9:30-11:00am
159: TR 11:00am-12:15pm
Term: 
Fall 2023
Categories: 
The Arts
Global Issues
Instructor(s)

Samantha Deal

Samantha Deal

Samantha Deal is a poet, essayist, and editor from Boone, North Carolina. She holds a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA from UNC-Wilmington, and a PhD in English & Creative Writing at Western Michigan University, where she specialized in documentary poetry, cross-genre writing, & the American "long poem." While at Western Michigan, she taught undergraduate literature/writing courses; co-coordinated the Poets in Print Reading Series; and served as an editor for the New Issues Press first book series. An avid supporter of local bookstores and small presses, she has worked for journals and organizations such as Ecotone, The North Carolina Writers' Network, Barefoot Books, and Third Coast—where she served as nonfiction editor. She has also taught courses at Coastal Carolina Community College and UNC-Wilmington.

Samantha is the winner of the 2016 Writers at Work fellowship in creative nonfiction and has been a finalist for prizes from Mississippi Review, The Boiler, River Styx, OSU Press/The Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, and Sonora Review, among others. Her creative work has appeared in Best New Poets 2017, Ninth Letter, Hunger Mountain (where she was selected by Kathleen Graber as an honorable mention for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize), Quarterly West, Rattle, and other journals. Samantha's first poetry collection, Something Opened, was a runner-up for the 2017 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2019. A lover of all things water, Samantha divides her time between Boone and Wrightsville Beach (where she spends as much time as possible attempting to surf).