Delve Readers Seminar: 9/11 Literatures and the Global War on Terror: 20th Anniversary

2021 marks the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack and a period classified as the “global war on terror.” In this Delve seminar we will read, reflect, and discuss the literary responses to the immediate and the long-term impacts of the war on terror and the rise of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the changing socio-political landscape of American life post 9/11. The literary texts that we will read will provide some broad understanding about public anxiety and trauma, particularly for those who experienced 9/11 closely and those that belonged to the Muslim-American communities. We will also unpack various representations and debates surrounding the ways in which the figure of the terrorist, terrorism, torture, racism and Islamophobia have informed the study of the 9/11 genre. Please note: this class meets for 3 hours for each meeting.

Reading list and schedule
Oct 9 Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Oct 16 The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and Sand Opera by Philip Metres
Oct 30: Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

Access Program
We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would like to take a writing class at the Access Rate.

Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt received her Ph.D. from University of Minnesota in English, specializing in postcolonial literature and theory. She also holds a M.A. degree in Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt is a professor in the English department at Linfield University. She is the author of the book, The Postcolonial Citizen: The Intellectual Migrant published in 2010. The book has garnered much attention internationally, and she has been featured in OPB and KABOO.As a scholar-activist, she frequently writes and engages about diversity and equity-related issues in higher education impacting marginalized faculty and students. She is currently working on two book projects. The first is a monograph titled 9/11 Literatures: The Anxious Canon. The second project is an edited collection of essays, Civility, Free Speech and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins forthcoming from Routledge in 2020. Dutt-Ballerstadt’s writings can be read in Inside Higher Ed, Counterpunch, Truthout and in her blog Being Brown and Out/Raged.