Global Japanese Literature

Catalog description

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of global Japanese literature, in dialogue with critical approaches that illuminate these texts. The narrative of ethnic, geographic, and linguistic isomorphism ¿ the notion that a Japanese people speaking a Japanese language live in the Japanese islands ¿ is a carefully crafted and relatively modern fiction in Japan. This course examines the gradual, and still contentious, formation of a "Japanese" literary canon from multiple vantage points. The class combines a survey of key texts composed in the Japanese islands and in Japanese diaspora communities, alongside an examination of the critical paradigms that surround the production, reception, and interpretation of these texts.