This course will introduce students to major works of modern and contemporary British literature through the lens of theories of culture. We will look at novels, poems, essays, and dramas to get a sense of the ways these texts create and respond to “culture” as a national heritage, and indicator of class, a lifestyle preference, or an accident of location and history. Readings may include works by: Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Sayers, W.H. Auden, Carolyn Kay Steedman, Bill Buford, Hanif Kureishi, W.G. Sebald and Zadie Smith, as well as literary and cultural theorists George Orwell, Raymond Williams, Dick Hebdige, and Edward Said.