Obioma, Chigozie
TR 9:35 AM
Park Hall 0250
ENGL 4866, as the course title suggests, concerns a series of novels by writers of the 20th century. Despite its broad scope, the course is not intended as an exhaustive survey, but as an opportunity for us to concentrate on a select group of texts and explore how these novelists use various literary conventions to evoke the economic, psychological, and social forces that shape the lives of the characters these texts depict. We will attend closely to character, narrative technique, theories, criticisms, and general commentaries on these texts and investigate how they helped shape the socio-economic as well as the political realities of the century as well as considering how these works represent, understand, interrogate, and share human experience. We will also consider how a literary work may be viewed as a record of lived experience that speaks to contemporaneous issues, or that excavates and accesses history. Class sessions will vary in format, featuring lecture, discussion, and group work. Course work will include short papers, presentations, critical annotations, and a final research paper.