Fall 2011

Description

This class will trace the full range of postmodern fiction. We will begin with a thorough encounter with the work of Jorge Luis Borges and go on to read longer works by Samuel Beckett, Nabokov, Anna Kavan, Salman Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee, and Angela Carter and shorter pieces by authors like Maurice Blanchot, William Burroughs, John Hawkes, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, Margaret Atwood, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Jeanette Winterson. We will also explore hyperfiction and some theories of postmodernism. Requirements: Midterm, term paper (10 pp), take home final, various short assignments, and an appreciation of the unusual.