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Twentieth Century British Literature

ENGL 061.601
instructor(s):
R 6:30-9:30

This course offers a broad overview of twentieth-century British literature in the context of British politics and culture. Our political and cultural stopping points will include: the breakdown of the British Empire, World War I, the women's movement, the changing perceptions of class hierarchies before and after World War II, and contemporary forms of nativism and immigration politics. We will pay particular attention to how British writers understood "Britishness" in relation to art and culture. Course texts may include: Rudyard Kipling's Kim, D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, Carolyn K. Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, and Bill Buford's Among the Thugs, as well as excerpts from critical writing by Rebecca West, T. S. Eliot, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, and Paul Gilroy. The main course requirements will consist of two short papers, one long research paper, and a final exam.

fulfills requirements