English 270 - Fall, 2011

Studies in Contemporary World Literature

Class Information

Instructor: Marx, John
CRN: 83755
Time: W 3:10-6:00
Location: 120 Voorhies
Breadth: Later British
Focus: Genre, Other National, Theory

Description

Is “Contemporary Literature” a Period, and How Would We Know If It Were?

Although job ads, academic journals, and even a robust Wikipedia entry recognize Contemporary Literature as a literary historical category beginning in the vicinity of 1945, the myriad subcategories that fall within it, not to mention the geographic scale of the literature studied in its name, tend to suggest that this is not a period with the coherence of, for instance, the Renaissance or Modernism. Study of contemporary American literature breaks down into micro-genres and multiple competing minor literatures while, at the same time, avidly crossing borders and tracking paths of migration. Contemporary British and postcolonial literary study bleed into one another, becoming virtually indistinguishable in some scholarship, even as both devolve into smaller regionalisms and movements. To consider the periodization of contemporary writing, in short, is to consider its peculiar scale, both demonstrably smaller and bigger than the national literatures that organize the periods immediately preceding it. We will limit our purview largely to the novel, supplemented by relevant criticism and one notable work of non-fiction prose. Although our readings will remain resolutely current, focusing on the last 20 years of writing, they will cross that 1945 line conceptually, as we observe how writers and critics find it necessary to turn to the past (sometimes the very distant past) in an effort to understand the period of the present.

Supplemental scholarly reading to include work by the likes of Rey Chow, Mahdu Dubey, Franco Moretti, Amy Hungerford, Simon Gikandi, Fredric Jameson, Neil Lazarus, Mark McGurl, Aamir Mufti, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Chu Yiu-Wai.

Texts

Dictee (2001), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Free Enterprise (1993), Michelle Cliff
Open City (2011), Teju Cole
In an Antique Land (1993), Amitav Ghosh
C (2010), Tom McCarthy
Gain (1998), Richard Powers
Butterfly Burning (1998), Yvonne Vera