Studies in 20th-Century Literature (368-0-20)
Topic
Global Fictions of Terror and Insurgency
Instructors
Kalyan Sunder Sameer Nadiminti
Meeting Info
University Hall 218: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM
Overview of class
What can literature tell us about the political language of revolution and insurgency? We might think that the state's vocabulary of insurgency occupies a distinctly different domain from novels and poetry, but a great deal of ink has been spilt for centuries on dissidence, revolutionary movements, and the state's attempts to quell rebellion. The events of 9/11 have returned us in the last twenty years to the intersections between literature and terror. This course explores how contemporary authors from the US, South Asia, Middle East, and North Africa offer varied accounts of insurgency in fiction. How might these texts either continue or critically challenge existing narrative tropes used to represent terrorism and literature? Moving from New York to Lahore, from Ground Zero to Baghdad, we will read American novels like Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel In the shadow of no towers alongside Pakistani novels like Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim's short stories, Assignments will include two short close-reading papers, a presentation, and a final annotated bibliography.
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area