Lectures on and discussion of major novels of the twentieth century.

This course is a survey of the 20th century novel. The novel is the quintessential form of expression of modernity and modern subjectivity. In this survey of key works of the century, we will explore the novel form as it is framed by these three thematics: history, modernism, and empire. Some questions we will address: how have the vicissitudes of modernity lead to a re-direction of historical narration within the novel; how have modernist aesthetic experimentation re-shaped the very form of the novel and lastly how has the phenomenon of imperialism, the asymmetrical relations of power between center and periphery, widened the scope and influence of fictive milieu. We will conclude at the cusp of the 21st century with a work of speculative fiction.

Book List

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Theodor Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus
Assia Djebar, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills