William Faulkner was a great writer in two ways. First, he was the most interesting formal innovator of all the novelists of American modernism (as in The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying). Second, he was a strange and provocative theorist of race (as in Go Down, Moses and Absalom, Absalom!). We shall consider both these dimensions of Faulkner, and what they have to do with each other. Then we shall take up novelists in the Faulkner tradition. One of these will be Toni Morrison; others will be from the Southern tradition (I will choose among such writers as Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason). This course will be conducted entirely as a seminar. Requirements: one 5- to 8-page paper and one 15-page paper. Students will also report on Faulkner criticism. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Major Seminar. Enrollment limited to 15 (expected: 15). Preference to English majors. (Post-1900)