This course will provide an introduction to studies of the novel. Our specific focus throughout will be on “family romances,” fictions that narrate social, political, and economic conflicts as family dramas. Together we will ask: why did emergence of the novel occur alongside the emergence of the nuclear family in the West? What is the “novel,” and which media are included or excluded from it at different times? What is the “family,” and which forms of intimate and domestic life are included or excluded from it at different times? We will focus our discussions on novels and short fiction written in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but we will also engage with critical pieces and visual media to test our understanding of “family romance.”

Required Texts: Nella Larsen, Passing; Junot Diaz, Drown; Fae Myenne Ng, Bone; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body. A course reader will contain short stories and critical essays.