Modern Family: Forms of Kinship in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature

3ch (3S) [W] · Undergraduate

Analyze kinship, the biological and social bonds between people, in 20 th - and 21 st - century literature from around the world. Develop an understanding of the way kinship organizes personal and political lives, including 1) the way the nuclear family—Father, Mother, Dick, and Jane—helps maintain patriarchal, colonial, class, and religious dominance, and 2) how non-hierarchical or non-heteronormative structures of family experiment with liberated forms of living. Literary authors may include Chrystos, David Chariandy , Alice Munro, Nuruddin Farah, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, and Virginia Woolf, and critical readings include the works of Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, Frantz Fanon, Sigmund Freud, Audre Lorde, José Esteban Muñoz , and Ann Stoler. NOTE : Open to ENGL Honours students.