Fiction of Poli Glbl Affairs

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

How does one tell a fictional story about themes that impact not only individuals, but thousands or millions or even billions of people stretching across borders, oceans and hemispheres? Put differently, how does an artist craft a narrative about ethnic conflict, the displacement of refugees, environmental catastrophe, gender-based violence, human sexual trafficking, colliding –isms, religious extremism, the international drug trade, and the militarism of state and non-state actors, among other issues? To investigate this topic, we will concentrate solely on intellectually and aesthetically rigorous short stories, novellas, novels, and graphic novels. We will supplement our analysis by consulting scholarship, both in the literary and international relations spaces, that engages this art. Our inquiry will canvas leading writers from Africa (e.g., Adichie, Mengiste, Dangarembga, Thiong’o), Latin America and the Caribbean (e.g., Garcia Marquez, Oloixarac, Marlon James, Allende), India and Pakistan (e.g., Solanki, Roy, Adiga, Rushdie), China and Korea (e.g., Hao Jingfang, Gene Yang, Chin-Sun Lee) as well as Western writers who confront these problematics (e.g., Roth, Houellebecq, Kipling, Atwood). Some of the questions we pursue are: How does one represent, through the medium of literature, events that affect not only individuals but entire societies, if not the world itself? Is every macro-political story really a micro-story about human passions and frailties? What are the limits of fictional representation? What can fiction not capture about politics and global affairs?