Department of English

This is an introduction to contemporary American and British literature that focuses on the economic dimensions of the literary world. In part this means the business side of literature: the publishing industry, the role of agents, the rising power of Amazon, the concentration of global sales and profits around a few blockbuster authors and brands, the spread of e-books and audiobooks, and the prevalence of adaptation between print and screen media. But we will also consider economics in a broader sense that includes the circulation of symbolic rewards: the so-called “economy of prestige,” which revolves less around money than around “reputational capital” and alternative currencies such as prizes, awards, and high-status MFA degrees or university professorships. Our approach will be to study a range of contemporary novels in some detail, learning about how they and their authors managed to succeed in a challenging fiction market and how they reflect in their stories or styles certain features of today’s literary marketplace. Texts might include such novels as Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad; Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Hugh Howie, Wool; Andy Weir, The Martian; and John Scalzi, The Dispatcher.