English 10C-1 - Winter, 2018

Literatures in English III: 1900-Present

Class Information

Instructor: Thomas, George
CRN: 53011
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Location: 293 Kerr

Description

This is a reading- and writing-intensive course designed to help prepare students for upper-division courses in the English major. Our focus will be on English-language literature since 1900. We will read poetry, short stories, novels, and drama from America, the UK and Ireland, the Caribbean, and Africa.

We will work through four “chapters,” each organized around a central theme:
“The Avant-Garde,” “The Empire Writes Back,” "Other Voices" and “So Meta”—roughly corresponding to four big topics in twentieth-century literature: modernism; colonialism and postcolonialism; race, ethnicity, and border; and postmodernism and the contemporary. The goal is to help you become a dynamite close reader with a good working knowledge of Anglophone literature from the last 117 years.

Grading

Attendance/Participation, two Close Reading Papers, Research Paper, Group Presentation, Final Exam

Texts

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
Fences, August Wilson
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz