English 147 - Winter, 2011

American Literature 1945 to the Present

Class Information

Instructor: Brown, Nathan
CRN: 43918
Time: TR 4:40-6:00
Location: 118 Olson

Description

STRANGERS, EXILES, COSTUMES

This course will focus on displacement, alterity, exile, and subtle disguises in American Fiction from 1945-present. We will ask what these conditions, situations, or problems have to do with the constitution of "fiction," and we will study their treatment across different scenarios, settings, moods, and formal strategies. That is, we will study them in different *contexts.* Thus we will be concerned with fiction as a genre (with the continuities and transformations that at once hold that genre together and take it apart) and with the way in which novels function as a site of existential and historical inquiry (their manner of situating problems--affective, discursive, unconscious, political--and investigating their consequences).

Grading

Participation/Attendance: 10%
5 Discussion Posts: 15%
Essay #1: 20%
Essay #2: 30%
Final Exam: 25%

Texts

Steps , Jerzy Kosinski
Reader's Block, David Markson
Run River, Joan Didion
Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith
Exilee/Temps Morts, Theresa Cha
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
The People of Paper, Salvador Plascencia