English 246 - SOUTH ASIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

This course will explore the rich diversity of late 20th and 21st century literatures written in English and published internationally by award-winning writers of South Asian descent from Britain, the U.S., Canada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Writers range from established celebrities (Rushdie, Naipaul, Kureishi, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ondaatje, Selvadurai, Ghosh) to promising new stars (Kiran Desai, Hari Kunzru, Tahmima Anam, Monica Ali, Daniyal Mueenuddin). Among many questions, we will consider how writers craft new idioms and forms to address multiple audiences in global English, how they explore or foreground emergent concerns of postcolonial societies and diasporic, migrant, or transnational peoples in a rapidly globalizing but by no means equalizing world. Not recommended for first-year students.