L224 Introduction to
World Literatures in English
Professor: Vivian Halloran
ENG-L 224 INTRO TO WORLD LIT IN ENGLISH (3 CR)
30680 11:15A-12:05P MW
BH 005
Discussion (DIS)
30681 11:15A-12:05P F
JH 440
30682 12:20P-01:10P
F BH 238
Distribution Credit: IUB GenEd A&H credit, IUB GenEd World Culture credit, COLL (CASE) Global Civ & Culture credit,
and COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
This course begins from the
premise that literary works construct fictive worlds that correspond to, and
vary from, the lived reality experienced by readers. Taking genre considerations into account, we
will embark upon a considered analysis of two general types of accounts of
“worldliness”: immigrant tales and home-spun narratives. Although these
perspectives are not mutually exclusive, the primary difference between these
kinds of stories are the claims of ownership characters tend to make towards
the specific geopolitical space (city, state,
province, country) they find
themselves inhabiting. Home-spun narratives are told from an insider’s
perspective, while immigrant’s tales describe the in-between process of
identifying difference and learning to fit in. However, neither of these
vantage points are fixed or unchanging; on the contrary, the assigned works
call into question the basic assumptions undergirding the insider/outsider,
domestic/international binaries by forcing us to consider how, as a literary
language, English can simultaneously render foreignness familiar, as well as
make the everyday seem eerie and strange.
In this class, we will be using
Twitter and Storify to identify and analyze current events taking place in the
geopolitical regions where these narratives are set because they will influence
our collective interpretation of the same. The individual sections will follow
the template of World Literature Today e-newsletter to report their collective
assessment of the texts we read during the semester; together, these “e-newsletters”
will make up the review material for the exams.
Students will write two five-page, double spaced analytical essays and
take exams over the material.
Assigned works:
Immigrant
Tales:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, That Thing Around Your Neck (stories;
Nigeria)
Teju Cole, Open City: A Novel
(novel; Nigeria)
Austin Clarke, There Are no Elders
(stories; Barbados/Canada)
Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her (stories;
Dominican Republic/US) *He will come to Bloomington April 8th, 2014.
Home-spun narratives:
Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
(stories, Canada)
Samrat Uphadhyay, Buddha’s Orphans (novel; Nepal/US) *He will speak to our class in
person.
D. Bruno Starrs, That Blackfella
Blood Sucka Dance! (novel; Australia) (Kindle edition)
