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Twentieth-Century Literature in a Global Context

Contemporary South Asian Writing: Literature and Theory

Most contemporary South Asian writing tends to be read and studied exclusively in terms of anti-colonial (nationalist) history. This course, however, broadens the focus to engage questions of aesthetics and politics that persist beyond the moment of negotiated political independence into the present day and age of economic and cultural globalization. Thus while we will read representative works that have been identified with the anti-colonial moment, we will also attempt to familiarize ourselves with a range of other traditions and formations. Covering writers from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Canada and the United States, we will look closely at texts drawn from partition literature, dalit literature, feminism, human rights discourse, immigrant literature, and literary internationalism. Fiction selections will include Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh, Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh,” Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Mahasweta Devi’s “Pterodactyl”as well as short stories and poems from Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka and Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature. Theoretical texts will include literary criticism by Meenakshi Mukherjee, Kumkum Sangari, Fredric Jameson, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Required books (available at Rutgers University bookstore):

Salman Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh

Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Additional required readings (articles and short stories etc.) are available on e-reserve.

Course Requirements:

1. One short (4-5 page) paper 20%
2. Midterm Exam 20%
3. Group oral presentation (20 mins) on the assigned reading for the week 20%
4. 1 page proposal for final paper 5%
5. 7-10 page final paper 25%
6. Class participation 10%

Absence Policy:

Engaged attendance is expected at all classes. After 4 absences, you risk failing the course.