EN2C9/EN3C9 The Global Novel
This module is not currently running.
Convenor: Prof. Pablo Mukherjee, H518
Method of Assessment 2019/20:
Intermediate Years:
2 x 3,000-word essays (80%)
Citation and bibliographic exercise/critical review of text not on syllabus (20%)
Finalists:
2 x 4,000-word essays (80%)
Group video essay/group podcast work/critical blogpost of ‘global’ text/conceptual issue in world literature (20%)
Essay Submission Dates:
Available on this link: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/essay
Overview
Students taking this module will read novels from all around the world, from the 19th century to the present, within the framework of recent debates over world-literature, modernity, and the still unfolding process of globalisation. We will consider how widening our comparative and international perspective enables us to read and interpret novels (even the most seemingly ‘local’ or ‘national’ productions) as irresistibly ‘global’. The module analyses how certain novelistic forms, themes and issues ‘travel’. Students will discover ways in which certain works contain traces, adaptations and importations of ‘core’ (or global) issues, and adapt, remodel or reject them in accordance with local/national forms and expressions. Issues such as work/war/resources/imperialism/climate/finance/disaster/modernisation and others will be traced as we work to establish each novel's 'globality'. We will consider a number of elements in form and subgenre - magic realism/blog novels/graphic novels/speculative fiction/annalistic wiritng, but we will also look at each work's mediation, its commercial and cultural production and its geopolitical conditioning. You'll also pick up a solid understanding of the crucial issues and debates in globalisation. The module will read novels from Scotland to China, Saudi Arabia to Colombia, England to the U.S, and demonstrate why a global perspective is a necessary requisite for literary studies in the 21st century.
Syllabus 2018/19
TERM ONE
As a supplement to the primary module texts, we use a module pack, with criticism and questions for reading. These are available here.
Weeks 2-5: t1 wks 2-5
Weeks 7-10 : 
Global/Local/Home/Away
Week 1: Introduction - we will be meeting each other and looking at selections from these essays below in the first class. Try and read as many as you can prior to class. Click on the links to access pdf's of each article.
Primary Readings (please read for class)
Franco Moretti, 'Conjectures on World Literature', New Left Review 1 (2000) 54-68
WReC, "The European Literary Periphery," Chapter 5 of Combined and Uneven Development : Towards a New Theory of World-Literature (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2016) [available through library website as an e-book]
Susie O’Brien and Imre Szeman, 'Introduction: The Globalization of Fiction/the Fiction of Globalization', The South Atlantic Quarterly 100:3, Summer (2001) 603-626
Mariano Siskind, 'The Globalization of the Novel and The Novelization of the Global: A Critique of World Literature', Comparative Literature 62 (2010) 4: 336-60. (from Theo D’Haen, César Dominguez and Mads Rosendahl Thomson (eds.), World Literature: A Reader (London: Routledge 2013): 329-52.
Secondary
Paik Nak-Chung, 'Nations and Literature in the Age of Globalization' in Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds., The Cultures of Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press, 1998, 218-229
David Damrosh, selections from How to Read World Literature, London: Routledge, 2009 (particularly 'Going Global' chapter); 'Conclusion: World Enough and Time', What Is World Literature?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Nico Israel 'Globalization and Contemporary Literature', Literature Compass 1 (2004) 20C 104, 1–5
Week 2: John Galt, Annals of the Parish (Scotland, 1821)
Week 3: Gabríel Garcia Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia, 1967)
Week 4: Gabríel Garcia Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (Colombia, 1967)
Week 5: Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt Vol 1. (Saudi Arabia/Lebanon, 1987) temp(PDF Document)
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt Vol 1. (Saudi Arabia/Lebanon, 1987) temp(PDF Document)
Week 8: Joe Sacco, Palestine (2003)
Week 9: Salam Pax, The Baghdad Blog (Iraq, 2003)
Week 10: Yan Liang, Dream of Ding Village (China, 2006, trans.2011)
Term TWO: Creative Destructions: Globalisation and Literature
Week 1: Globalisation as Disaster (Selected Chapters from Eric Cazdyn ed. Disastrous Consequences: A Special Issue of South Atlantic Quarterly and Rob Nixon, Slow Violence) See here for link to: The Bridge Builders; See here for link to Eric Cazdyn article; See here for link to Rob Nixon chapters
Week 2: Liam O'Flaherty, Famine (1937)
Week 3: Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003)
Week 4: Don Delilo, Cosmopolis (2003, DeLillo Seminar)
Week 5: John Lanchester, Capital (2013)
Week 6: Reading Week, No Class
Week 7: Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried (1990)
Week 8: Duong Thu Huong, Novel Without A Name (1991)
Week 9: Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer (2013)
*TERM ONE Materials
Term 1 Materials Wks 1-5 Term 2 Materials Wks 6-10
