Keeping it Real-ism: Constructing Reality in U.S. Fiction

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What does it mean when we label something - an experience, a story, a work of art - as "real" or "realistic"? How do we evaluate the correspondence between reality and fiction? Literary realism has often been associated with a steadfast and often unimaginative faithfulness to reality. In this course, we will read realism differently. Studying the evolution of literary realism, we will consider how writers and their narratives struggle to reflect their fidelity to the real-world and art-world. What happens when narrative worlds cannot be reduced to or "pin down" reality? We will focus on the creative and imaginative, often experimental, capacity of literary realism that works to defamiliarize, multiply, or challenge constructed realities. Humans, as Gertrude Stein wrote, "are interested in two things. They are interested in reality and interested in telling about it." This course will take up the study of American literary realism to trace how these two interests intersect in how we construct representations of reality. We will consider different forms of realism, from social realism, naturalism, and magical realism to realism in philosophy, pop-culture, film and television, and videogames.