HENB01394U English - Elective 2, topic 4: 21st Century U.S. Writing

As the U.S. enters a period of radical instability and political extremity, this course looks at how writers have been making sense of life in the wake of the so-called ‘American Century.’ Has something changed, or is the 21^st Century fundamentally a continuation of the 20^th? With a particular focus on the work of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and migrant writers, this module will explore history, futurity, citizenship, identity, migration, and domestic and international terror as some of the dominant themes of contemporary U.S. writing. 

Course plan and final reading list will be uploaded to Absalon as a selection from the following titles: Carmen Boullosa, Tejas: la gran ladronería en el Lejano Norte/Texas: The Great Theft; Don DeLillo, Point Omega; Yuri Herrera, Señales que precederán al fin del mundo/Signs Preceding the End of the World; Karla Holloway, A Death in Harlem; Claudia Rankine, Citizen; Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life; Valeria Luiselli, The Lost Children Archive; Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer; Tommy Orange, There There; Leslie Marmon Silko, Gardens in the Dunes; Wendy Trevino, Cruel Fiction; Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous; Jess Walter, The Zero; Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad.