Modern and Contemporary Literature

Contenu

Novels have never felt more important in a digital age in which truth can longer be distinguished from fiction and attention has become a scarce commodity. In this seminar, we will discuss six significant short American novels published since 2000, asking how they address our contemporary age, and in what ways they may be read as allegories on the state of the nation
Focusing on the connected themes of immigration and race, education and society, and religion and family, we will look at ways in which the United States, in the words of George Packer, may be ‘unwinding’. Supplementary material will be presented in class addressing contemporary topics such as the myth of American exceptionalism, neoliberalism, secularization, multiculturalism, racism, LGBT rights, the ‘culture wars’, climate catastrophism and ecocide, as well as the place of reading and writing in the digital age. Is America, as Julia Kristeva has argued, a depressed society because it cannot get past its lost ideals?