Studies in Contemporary Literature
Term 1
MWF, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
What might it mean for a literary work to be of its time? What might it mean for it to address, not only its “own” time–that of its writing or its publication–but also our “own” time, that is, the time of its reading? This course studies “contemporary literature” as it names at least two different things: literature of a specific period (literature written after World War Two, say, or after 1968, or after 9/11); and literature that addresses the idea of the contemporary as a relationship that holds between any two events or phenomena that take place at the same time. The course explores writing that addresses questions of the contemporary, and seeks to understand both what is historical and what is ahistorical about this writing. In addtion to cass studies of specific authors/works, the course proposes that a handful of tools from affect theory can help to develop methods for moving between temporal scales. Writers and artists may include some of the following: Elena Ferrante, Lena Dunham, Garry Shandling, Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol, Robert Ashley, Bertolt Brecht, Emily Dickinson, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Raymond Williams, others.
