English 217GA - Topics in English: 'Global Anglophone Literature: Who Writes the World?'

The word "screening" in this course's title invokes its double and opposite meanings: that of projecting, but also that of obscuring. What gets foregrounded when we talk about global Anglophone literature and what gets occluded? In other words, who gets to say what? And for whom? In this course we will question the concept of the canon and how the canon has changed as more prominent, multiethnic writers across the globe write in English. We will dissect terms such as "multiculturalism," "cosmopolitanism," and "globalization." In addition to close reading texts by writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Ruth Ozeki alongside relevant theorists such as Gayatri Spivak and Rebecca Walkowitz, this course will not only take seriously the multinational nature of the authors we will read, their multinational personal histories, and the multinational settings of their novels, but also their dislocations and translocations.

Course limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors