Advanced Topics in Middle East & North African Studies (390-6-1)

Topic

Magical Realism in World Literature

Instructors

Jesús Cruz Muñoz

Meeting Info

Online: Mon, Fri 9:00AM - 11:30AM

Overview of class

Magical Realism and World Literature (COMP_LIT 301; MENA 390-6)

An upper-class Chilean housewife marries her cousin but falls in love with a mysterious man. Deciding whether or not he's real is a decision that her life depends on.
A Haitian revolutionary figure is burned at the stake and dies… or did he morph into a mosquito and escape?
A Bedouin tribe-leader abandons his family, leaves his village, and suddenly disappears after foreseeing the village's destruction by an American oil company. He reappears only to prophetically call down rain in a neighboring drought-stricken village, and to haunt the imaginations of the oil company supporters.
What do these stories have in common? These stories were written across different continents and in different languages throughout the 20th century, but in spite of their different social, political, and historical situations, they are all understood as examples of a popular literary category called "magical realism."
In this course, students will learn about what magical realism is by reading popular and lesser-known stories, translated from primarily Spanish and Arabic, in order to understand how a new style of reading and writing became a worldwide phenomenon that is still being used today. The course will expose students both to Latin American literature, as the tradition most commonly associated with magical realism, as well as to Arabic literature, as a less-studied tradition of magical realism. Students will learn how to recognize and describe the elements of literary magical realism while developing an understanding of the cultural, political, and historical contexts that inform its development. The course will pair readings from both literary traditions chronologically and slowly expand student understanding of the questions and problems that magical realism, as a global literary form, presents for readers and scholars.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
Synchronous:Class meets remotely at scheduled time