Modern and Contemporary literature is part and
parcel of a wide range of historical, philosophical, global, and sociopolitical
contexts that inform the spirit of 20th and 21st century
literature, culture and theory. In a similar vein, the form and content of the
selected literary texts in this course have been prompted intricately by
multiple aesthetic, existential, global, orientalist, postcolonial, and
postmodernist trends regarding gender issues, race, Middle Eastern and
Eurocentric encounters. Such trends address multiple pressing and timely
premises such as black aesthetic (e.g., African American literature), ecological
crises (Ecocriticism and the dystopic scenarios), post 9/11 literature, world
system (core, periphery, genocide of modernity, etc.,)
advances in science and technology, the refugee crisis and Occidentalism.
Finally, our conversations and discussions will critically address the way(s)
in which this literature can be interpreted and reimagined to rethink national
and transnational sociopolitical and socio-ecological relations and world
literature toward just and sustainable postcolonial ecologies and a culture of
hope in the face of neocolonial, capitalist and colonial dogmatism and
determinism. In this course, the emphasis is on a selection of major texts
written after 1950 and address the above central issues by a range of prominent
writers.
- المعلم: اسماء محمد حسين