English 10C - Summer Sessions II, 2017

Literatures in English III: 1900-Present

Class Information

Instructor: Balds, Treena
CRN: 74026
Time: MTW 10:00-11:40
Location: 116 Veihmeyer

Description

ENL 10C is the third in the required Literatures in English sequence of reading- and writing-intensive courses that prepare majors and minors for the more demanding upper-division English courses. It covers Anglophone literature after 1900 and encompasses modernist, postmodernist, and contemporary forms. In addition to discussing readings in light of questions of time, space, race, nationalism, and economic structure, students will also engage texts from critical theoretical standpoints. Modernist texts are often difficult and make the reader work for meaning. Students will be encouraged to ponder the relationship that kind of work bears to the experience of reading other literary genres, such as critical essays that require intense reader engagement. They will relate these ideas to (post)modernist trends that blur the lines between fiction and fact (e.g. J. G. Ballard), story and essay (J. M. Coetzee), character and author (Flann O’Brien), dialogue and stage directions (Samuel Beckett). Finally, students will consider the degree to which evolution of narratives and reader-author relationships throughout the last century has imparted (or supported) a certain malleability and interactivity to the contemporary texts that mark the digital age.

Grading

Papers, In-Class Activities, Attendance and Class Participation, Presentations, Final Exam

Texts

The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. F (ISBN: 978-0-393-91334-7), Martin Puchner (Editor)