Tradition and Globalization in Contemporary World Literature

This course will survey contemporary world literature, with particular emphasis on questions about how local traditions respond to the pressures of globalization. We will read stories and novels from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and ask how writers use fiction to examine social and historical conflicts, challenge official histories, and recover forgotten voices and neglected traditions. We will also explore how writers used traditional narrative resources to stretch the possibilities of the novel and the short story. In many of these works, local answers to global historical pressures involve reviving traditional aesthetic practices, and we will approach our materials as both social documents and works of art. We will also discuss ways of bringing formal and aesthetic questions to bear on discussions of social issues in the classroom.