This class will introduce you to key modern and postmodern literary texts, which you will learn to read in their historical, cultural and material contexts. Thematically, we will use these texts as a starting point to ask questions about “violence:” At what point can we say that an act, or a relationship between people, is violent? What are the consequences of making this judgment? In what kinds of circumstances is language violent? What is the relationship between the insights these texts provide about violence and the context in which they were written?
Course work will include a demanding reading schedule, participation in class discussion, short writing assignments, and mid-term as well as final papers.
Reading List

Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Foucault, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Vol.
(excerpts in course pack)
Kane, Blasted (excerpts in course pack)
Eliot, The Waste Land (excerpts in course pack)
Morrison, Beloved
Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Texts:

• William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. Norton, 1993. [0393964817]
• Toni Morrison. Beloved. Vintage, 2004. [1400033411]
• Jeanette Winterson. Lighthousekeeping. Harcourt, 2005. [0151011176]
• Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse. Harvest, 2005. [0156030470]