Proposed Undergraduate Course
Post-Postmodernism?
rationale
- Postmodern America fiction arose in the Cold War, Civil Rights, Information Age and is characterized by irony, intertextuality, pastiche, and metafiction. However, in the 1990s and 2000s, postmodern literature began to a shift away from irony and toward sincerity and faith, which caused some critics to speak of a reaction to postmodernism, post-postmodernism. This period and genre course will compare and contrast a cross-section canon of American postmodern novels from the 1960s through 1980s with novels from the 1990s and 2000s in order to debate if post-postmodernism exists and what its traits may be.
readings
- essays on postmodernism and post-postmodernism
- postmodern short fiction
- postmodern novel
- Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
- Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
- DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
- Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)
- Baker, The Mezzanine (1988)
- post-postmodern short fiction
- post-postmodern novel
- Gass, The Tunnel (1995)
- Wallace, Infinite Jest (1995)
- Palahniuk, Choke (2001)
- Martel, Life of Pi (2001) [Canadian]
- Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbences (2008)
assignments
- reading journal: students will keep a reading journal which records their thoughts and questions regarding the primary and secondary texts
- class wiki: the class will be responsible for compiling a collaborative wiki in which key essays on postmodernism and post-postmodernism are annotated and books are debated in terms of postmodern and post-postmodern traits
- midterm exam: students will take an exam that requires them to make connections and distinctions among issues and themes across postmodern fiction
- short paper (6-8 pages): students will compare and contrast a postmodern work and a post-postmodern work
- long paper (8-10 pages): students will write a research paper on a post-postmodern work