ENGL 354
Contemporary American Fiction Fall 2020
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

This course centers on American fiction from a late phase of postmodernism: we take for granted that history is a form of literature, and that race, gender, and self are constructions. Now what? The premise of the authors of this course is that we can return from these assumptions to write about history, race, gender, and the self in self-conscious but not debilitatingly self-conscious ways. Novels likely to be in the course that move from self or autobiography outwards: Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Ben Lerner, 10:04; Emma Donoghue, Room. Novels likely to be included that work from history inward: Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad; George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo. A novel likely to be included that is poised between self and history: Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.