01 MW5 CAC 30888 MCCLURE MU-208
Contemporary literature is global literature. Produced by writers from countries such as Sri Lanka, South Africa, Jamaica, and India as well as from the United States and Europe, today’s most compelling fiction circulates globally and registers the new conditions of existenceproduced by globalization. The novels we will read explore the forms, flows, and textures of the globalized world, its intricate networks, itsvast inequalities, and its mobile, multicultural populations. They question the systems of belief and historical movements that have givenrise to this world, and explore the conflicts that render it so unstable. And they explore the predicaments of transnational corporate travelers, humanitarian aid workers, migrants, terrorists, and people pinned down in zones of endemic poverty and war. The very shape of the novel shifts in response to the pressures of globalization: new literary forms suchas postmodernism and magical realism emerge in part as efforts to convey its scope and resist its powers.
We will read works by novelists such as Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Bessie Head, Don DeLillo, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Ondaatje, Michele Cliff, and J.M. Coetzee. An archive of passages from contemporary globalization theory will help us to bring the global concerns of these texts intofocus.
Regular attendance is required. A term essay (7-10 pages), three short (40minute) tests, and a final examination.
|
