This course identifies in modernist literary, visual and political culture, fault lines employed by post-war writers in projects that are sometimes loosely filed under the title of post-modernism, but include post-colonialism, post-structuralism, cultural study and post-humanism. We will read the primary texts closely and contribute individual and group presentations on postwar cultural contexts and competing approaches to defining the period “after” modernism. We will also read in and beyond the English language tradition, ending our course with a work by a work from the Western Balkans depicting a literary life begun at the margins of major traditions and continued in exile.

Major Texts: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts; James Joyce, Dubliners; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart and Dubravka Ugresic, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender and essays by Achebe, Eliot, Woolf, Jameson, Kincaid, Lyotard and others.