ENGL 052B. U.S. Fiction, 1945 to the Present

This course will focus on U.S. fiction published since 1980 to the present. The reading list will feature global perspectives on the U.S. as well as new understandings of the U.S.’s past and present. We’ll explore these novels’ formal inventiveness as well as their engagement with history, race, gender and sexuality, and a variety of other social issues, including multi-racial identities. Two of the readings will use the genre of “speculative fiction” to imagine the U.S.’s future. These stories question and rewrite the possibilities of personal, family, and national/transnational narratives. All also feature complex and compelling characters, both the heroes and their antagonists. Authors include Octavia Butler, Armistead Maupin, Paule Marshall, Celeste Ng, Patricia Park, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Meg Wolitzer. The reading load will be somewhat heavy-about one novel per week, along with brief supplemental materials. But I hope you’ll find these novels are fun and thought-provoking. This course is open to all students, without prerequisite.
20th/21st c.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Fall 2024. Schmidt.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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