Art Ethics Irish Troubles Lit

Catalog description

This course explores how various Irish (and English) novelists and short-story writers have depicted in fiction "the Troubles"-a protracted period of politically-motivated violence in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, which began in the late 1960s and has not fully ended today. By identifying the stories' aesthetic and ethical dimensions and their social and political contexts, we shall examine both the representation of violence and the potential violence of representation. Key questions include: What is the role of the artist in representing politically motivated and other types of violence? Should artists offer solutions or only pose problems? What are the aesthetical and ethical stakes of making art out of atrocity?