09:30A-10:45A TR (30) 3 cr.
OPEN TO MAJORS ONLY. DECLARED MINORS OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION FROM BH442.
The twentieth century began with Great Britain fighting to maintain its extensive colonial dominions and with the United States having just recently joined the overseas imperial contest. It ended with the British Empire having largely imploded and with the U.S. celebrating its status as lone world "superpower." The torch of empire had been passed; so, too, in some ways, had the mantle of "Englishness." The growth of the internet, the international impact of Hollywood, Wall Street's dominance over global capital markets, even the 1996 debates in this country about "English-only" schooling and government operations–these things show that, even though the sun does now set on the British Empire, "English" remains a powerful language as well as an important cultural marker.
We will read a variety of texts in this course that address, in one way or another, what has happened to Englishness since the end of the nineteenth century. We will pay particular attention to how the breakup of the British Empire and the consolidation of the American one has inspired literary response throughout the world. We will also explore such concepts as modernism, postmodernism, postcoloniality, and transnationalism and how they help us to understand works from this period.
We are likely to read seven or eight novels from the following list: Rudyard Kipling's Kim, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Virginia Woolf's, Mrs. Dalloway, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Nella Larsen's Passing, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat, Joan Didion's Salvador, Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. We may supplement these with poetry, short stories, and essays. Required work will likely include two medium-length papers (5-7 pages each), weekly reading responses/quizzes, and active participation in class discussion.