The Claims of Fiction

This course explores the interplay of tropes of strangeness, contamination, and crisis in a range of novels and shorter fiction, in English or in translation. We will ask why social misfits and outsiders somehow become such fascinating figures in fictional narratives. How do these fictions entice and equip readers to reflect on collective assumptions, values, and practices? Writers will include Baldwin, Brontë, Coetzee, Conrad, Faulkner, Ishiguro, Morrison, Naipaul, Rushdie, Salih, Shelley. Limited to 19 first-year students.