American Fiction, Twentieth Century and Beyond

Catalog description

Study of narrative fiction written in the twentieth century and after by a range of American writers who explore questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, and national belonging in their work in myriad ways. This course will examine major developments in narrative form and technique, based on developments in important literary traditions such as realism, modernism, or postmodernism. The course will situate the fiction in key contexts, whether literary or cultural. Representative writers: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, Louise Erdrich, Percival Everett, Gish Jen.