ENGL 36 Contemporary American Fiction

This course introduces students to the study of contemporary American fiction. How do writers and artists use fictional forms to participate in the urgent conversations of the present? How do we analyze and historicize literature and culture of the present and the recent past?  To answer these questions, this course focuses on the last fifteen years (or so) of American literary and cultural production. We’ll examine how American novels, short stories, television, and film from this period represent war, migration, financial crises, ecological disaster, pandemics, and racial violence; how they think about gender, sex, race, work, family, and money; how they play with form and popular genres; and how they are shaped by institutions such as the publishing industry and the university, as well as by digital platforms. Alongside our discussion of this fiction, we will explore related criticism and theory, and experiment with writing both literary criticism and fiction. Authors from recent iterations of the course have included Colson Whitehead, Tommy Orange, Raven Leilani, Ottessa Moshfegh, Ling Ma, Mohsin Hamid, Valeria Luiselli, Gillian Flynn, Carmen Maria Machado, Jesmyn Ward, and Jeff Vandermeer. 

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.

Department-Specific Course Categories

Course Group III

Offered

• Summer