Global Literary Marketplace

Catalog description

This course will give you an opportunity to consider contemporary literature from a new and exciting perspective: we will focus on marketing and the making of the literary canon, and each text in our reading list will facilitate a case study of a different aspect of literary marketing and/or publishing. We will examine the rise of international publishing conglomerates and indie presses and will study review and “list” cultures. We will consider the role of literary magazines but also GoodReads and (the former?) BookTok as well as its replacement(s), all the while querying how race, class and gender impact authors on the global literary marketplace. While we will read all the assigned books from cover to cover, we will also scrutinize the actuals covers of these books: how do blurbs, endorsements from other writers and the actual cover designs influence our reading of these novels? Finally, we will analyze international book prizes and we will talk about the economy and geography of prestige that these prizes carry, especially in the global context.