The Global Novel

How does fiction make sense of globalization and its uneven effects upon the world? And how do the histories of race and empire shape the contemporary novel? This course will introduce students to literatures beyond Europe and the United States by surveying the rich landscape of twentieth and twenty-first century Asian, African, and diasporic writing. Paying close attention to the formal aspects of storytelling, we will examine how novels represent the dizzying scale of a globe in crisis through innovations in language, plot, and form. Together we will learn about literary and popular genres—magical realism, dystopia, the bildungsroman, allegory, crime, and self-help—to appreciate how the novel has transformed in response to global economic and political upheaval. Students will be introduced to and learn how to apply theories of the novel, racial capitalism, Marxism, and postcolonialism. Authors will include Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, NoViolet Bulawayo, Karen Tei Yamashita, Nuruddin Farah, and Ling Ma. Assignments will include a few short Canvas discussion posts, one midterm close reading assignment, a class presentation, and a final research paper.