Week 1

Jan. 19

1: 1900s: End of an Era

Reading

• *Rudyard Kipling, "A Sahib's War," Windsor Magazine (1901; study guide)
• David Stuart Davies, Short History of the Ghost Story, Wordsworth Editions
  
• "Bumps in the Night," Part One of David Stuart Davies' History of the Ghost Story
  
• "Ho Ho Ho—Boo!," David Stuart Davies Looks at the Tradition of Ghost Stories at Christmas
  
• "Bumps in the Night," David Stuart Davies Concludes His Short History of the Ghost Story
• John M. Cunningham, "What's the Difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom?,"  Encyclopædia Britannica
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 1-12 (pp. 1–59)
  

Jan. 21

2: 1910s: Transcontinental Interconnections

Reading

• *Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line: A Confession (1917; study guide) parts I and II (pp. 249–91)
  
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 13–17 (pp. 60–86)

• *Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line: A Confession (1917; study guide) parts III and IV (pp. 291–324)
  
• Joseph Conrad, "Author's Note," The Shadow-Line: A Confession (1920)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 18–19 (pp. 87–94)
  

• Classcast
• Touch In (1 minute; let's try this: two different people sign up—first come first serve—for their one-minute and we rotate throughout the semester; I'll announce the results here on the detailed schedule who has touch in for each classcast; if not, I'll randomly call two from the roster)
• Lit Spot (2 minutes; your textual investigation in response to a weekly question)
• Theme of the Day (30 minutes)
• Introduction to The Shadow-Line (In groups of four students, introduce and close read the opening passage(s) of part III or part IV of Conrad’s The Shadow-Line. See Wood's analysis of the first paragraph of Greene's The Heart of the Matter for an idea. Write your group introduction in the linked to shared document.)
  
• 1: Rattanapat, Nopparuj
  
• 2: Muthita, Kulatida, Thammasil, Onjira, Sasisara
  
• 3: Kanidarpa, Passkorn, Pranaiya
  
• 4: Sirikorn, Aimboon
  
• 5: Fasai, Popkamol
• Virtual Fireside Readings
  

• *Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line: A Confession (1917; study guide) parts V and VI (pp. 324–62)
  
• "Votes for Women," British Library (2018)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 20–21 (pp. 95–105)
  

• Classcast
• Weekly 2
  
• Virtual Fireside Readings

Week 3

Feb. 2

5: 1920s: Experiments

Reading

• *Agatha Christie, "The Witness for the Prosecution," Flynn's, vol. 4, no. 2 (1925; study guide)
• *Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street" (1922; study guide)
• "Modern Fiction," The Common Reader (1921)
• Susan Dick, Introduction, The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf (1989)
  
• Susan Dick, "Editorial Procedures"
  
• Elaine Showalter, "Mrs Dalloway: Exploring Consciousness and the Modern World," British Library (2016)
• Bloomsbury Group
• "Lifestyle and Legacy of the Bloomsbury Group," Tate
• Alison Adler Kroll, "What Was the Bloomsbury Group?," National Trust
• Ian Sansom, "The Bloomsbury Group," Great Dynasties of the World, The Guardian (2011)
  
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 22–35 (pp. 111–81)
• "A Very Short History of Cinema," National Science and Media Museum (2011)
  

Feb. 4

6: 1930s

Reading

• *Frank O'Connor, "Guests of the Nation" (1931)
• Frank O'Connor, "Introduction," The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (1962)
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) chapter 1
  
• J. R. R. Tolkien, "Three Is Company," The Fellowship of the Ring, Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (1937, 1954) chapter 3
• *Diana Pavlac Glyer, "Dusting for Fingerprints"," Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings (2015) chapter 1
  
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 36 (pp. 182–88)
• Why War?
• Albert Einstein, Letter to Sigmund Freud (1932)
• Sigmund Freud, Letter to Albert Einstein (1932 reply)
• New York World's Fair: World of Tomorrow, PeriscopeFilm (1939; video clip, 9:27 min.)
  

Week 4

Feb. 9

7: 1940s: Engagements

Reading

• *George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945; study guide) chapters 1–3 (pp. 15–43)
  
• John Sutherland, "An Introduction to Animal Farm," British Library (2016)
• Mercedes Aguirre, "Animal Farm and the Beast Fable," British Library (2016)
  
• *George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946)
• "Russian Revolution: What Young Soviets Wanted for Today's Russians," BBC (2017)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982)

Feb. 11

8: 1940s

Reading

• *George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945; study guide) chapters 4–5 (pp. 44–62)
  
• George Orwell, Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm (1947)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapter 37 (pp. 189–91)

Week 5

Feb. 16

9: 1940s: Renaming

Reading

• *George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945; study guide) chapters 6–8 (pp. 63–103)
  
• John Sutherland, "An Introduction to Animal Farm," British Library (2016)
• "Study Guide," New Rep Theatre (2018)
• John Merriman, European Civilization, 1648–1945, Open Yale Courses (2008; includes downloadable transcript, audio and video)
• Lecture 19: "The Romanovs and the Russian Revolution" (46:57 min.)
  
• Lecture 21: "Stalinism" (46:47 min.)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 38 (pp. 192–98)
  

Feb. 18

10: 1940s: Visions

Reading

• *George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945; study guide) chapters 9–10 (pp. 104–28)
  
• Aldous Huxley, Letter to George Orwell on Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• *Arthur C. Clarke, "Hide and Seek," The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (1948)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 39–40 (pp. 199–210)
• "Britain: 1945 to Present," BBC

Week 6

Feb. 23

11: 1950s: Questioning

Reading

• *Wyndham Lewis, "My Fellow Traveller to Oxford," Rotting Hill (1951)
  
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapter 41 (pp. 211–14)
  
• Greg Buzwell, "The 1950s: English Literature's Angry Decade," British Library (2017)
• Wittayakorn Chiangkul, "บทสนทนาทางโทรศัพท์ ในค่ำคืนแห่งความว้าเหว่" (1969)
  

Feb. 25

12: 1960s: Recalibrating

Reading

• *Samuel Beckett, "Ping" (1966, 1967; study guide)
• *Muriel Spark, "The House of the Famous Poet" (1966)
• Jeanne Devoize and Pamela Valette, "Muriel Spark," interview, Journal of the Short Story in English 41 (2003)
  
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 42–43 (pp. 215–23)
  
• Christian House, "Boy Wonder: A Revealing View of Bruce Chatwin's Early Years at Sotheby's," Independent (2008)
• Rebecca A. Clay, "Bruce Chatwin: A Biography," review, Wilson Quarterly, vol. 24 (2000)
• Gary Raymond, "GWN Revisited: On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin," Wales Art Review (2017)
  

Week 7

Mar. 2

13: 1970s: Diversity

Reading

• *Angela Carter, "The Snow Child," The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979; study guide)
• *Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982) chapters 44–45 (pp. 224–34)
  

Mar. 4

Week 8

Mar. 9

No class (Midterm week: March 8–12, 2021)

Mar. 11

15: 1980s: Reclaiming the World

Reading

• *Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, "The Language of African Literature," Decolonizing the Mind (1981) parts 1–6
  
• *Salman Rushdie, "The Perforated Sheet" and "Mercurochrome," Midnight's Children (1981; study guide)
• Anita Desai, Introduction, Midnight's Children (1995)

Week 9

Mar. 16

Mar. 18

16: 1980s

Reading

• *Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins, Watchmen (1986) chapter 1
• Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen Annotated, edited by Leslie S. Klinger (2017) chapter 1
  
• Chernobyl, directed by Johan Renck, HBO (2019 TV mini-series)
  

Week 10

Mar. 23

17: 1990s

Reading

• *A. S. Byatt, Possession (1990) chapters 1 and 2
• Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, "Why I Choose to Write in Irish: The Corpse That Sits Up and Talks Back," The New York Times Book Review (1995)

Mar. 25

18: 1990s

Reading

• *Timothy Mo, Renegade, or Halo² (1999) chapters 1 and 2

Week 11

Mar. 30

19: 2000s: Constructive Disruption

Reading

• *Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (2009) pp. 1–33
• Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ (1982) excerpt
  

Apr. 1

20: 2000s

Reading

• *Clare Wigfall, "The Numbers," The Loudest Sound and Nothing (2008)
  

Week 12

Apr. 6

Apr. 8

Reading

• *Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011; study guide) part 1 (beginning–p. 56)
  

Week 13

Apr. 13

No class (Songkran)

Apr. 15

No class (Songkran)

Week 14

Apr. 20

22: Early 2010s
Reading

• *Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011; study guide) part 2 (pp. 59 "Later on in life"–105 "isn't all it's cracked up to be")
  

Apr. 22

23: Early 2010s

Reading

• *Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (2011; study guide) part 2 (p. 105 "Imagine someone, late at night, a bit drunk"–end)
  

Week 15

Apr. 27

24: Late 2010s: Disruption and Continuation

Reading

• *Aminatta Forna, Happiness (2018; study guide) "The Last Wolf" to chapter 7 (pp. 1–112)
• Aminatta Forna, "Selective Empathy: Stories and the Power of Narrative," World Literature Today (2017)
  

Apr. 29

• *Aminatta Forna, Happiness (2018; study guide) chapters 8–11 (pp. 113–184)
  
• *Maxine Sinclair, "Falling on Deaf Ears," The Limping Chicken (2016)
• "Deaf People Answer Commonly Googled Questions about Being Deaf," BuzzFeedVideo (2019; video clip, 5:45 min.)
• "Talk Stoop Featuring Marlee Matlin," Talk Stoop with Cat Greenleaf (2015; video clip, 6:14 min.)
• "Google — A CODA Story," Google (2021, video clip, 1:30 min.)
  

Week 16

May 4

No class (Coronation Day)

May 6

26: Late 2010s to the Present and Future: Habitat for Literature
Reading

• *Aminatta Forna, Happiness (2018; study guide)
  
• George Monbiot, "In Defense of Speciesism," The Guardian (2020)
• Cybernetic novels
  • Joshua Barrie, "Computers Are Writing Novels: Read a Few Samples Here," Business Insider (2014)
  • Michael Schaub, "Is the Future Award-Winning Novelist a Writing Robot?," Los Angeles Times (2016)
  • Brian Merchant, "When an AI Goes Full Jack Kerouac," The Atlantic (2018)
  • Gregory Barber, "Text-Savvy AI Is Here to Write Fiction," Wired (2019)
• Katie Paterson, Future Library (2014–2114 artwork)

Week 17

May 14

27: Final Insights

8:00-8:30 p.m.