This course focuses on contemporary fiction published in the last decade of the twentieth century. This was an exciting period of literary innovation, a time of experimentation in subject, form, and media. The texts we explore range from postmodern experiments to multicultural realisms, from historical fiction to science fiction, from cyberpunk to hypertext, from experimental films to literary theory.

One quickly notices that many of the best contemporary writers are trying to come to terms with this time of transition by looking to either the past or the future. Hence several of the texts delve deeply into aspects of our culture's history. Charles Johnson's The Middle Passage (1990) returns to the national trauma of slavery; Toni Morrison's Jazz (1992) explores the formative years of the Harlem Renaissance; while two of the books and a hypertext--Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl (1990), Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (1999), and Mary-Kim Arnold's "Kokura"--alternate between the terrible events of WWII and our own day. Two other novels invent dystopian futures from which to assess the turn of the century: Cynthia Kadohata's In the Heart of the Valley of Love (1996) and Philip Kerr's A Philosophical Investigation (1992). The remaining novels, movies, and hypertext focus their gaze on a recognizable present scene, although none particularly resembles the world that the popular media celebrates.

 

Visit the Student Projects completed this semester:

 

Lesley Cobb and Erin O'neil, "Kidnapped"	Myia Coleman, Jarred Tanksley, and Lindsay Wilson, "Post-Modern Consumer Services"	Ashley Eaton and John Greer, "Rocker Arrested for Cyberrape"
Dan Green, "The Simulacrums"		Jennifer Romans, "Victims of the Modern Age" (Powerpoint file)
Greg Glasheen, "Machine Madness"

 

 

Jay Clayton

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt English