Start here · Overview
Contemporary AmericanLiterature
What this course is
Throughout the semester, we'll read a range of recent American literature and consider questions like: What are people reading? What is literature? Who decides that? And what shifts might be happening in the literary landscape? You'll read an award-winning novel made popular by BookTok, short stories published in literary magazines, a humorous and poignant graphic novel, a fanfiction short story, and even interactive storytelling on Reddit.
Every one of those routes runs through gatekeepers: editors, publishing companies, prize juries, librarians, algorithms, moderators, a tagging system, a comment section. The question we keep coming back to isn't which of these is good. It's what people are reading in the 21st century, what gets counted as literature, and what each of those systems lets through, keeps out, and rewards.
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#what-is-literature
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What counts as literature?
That question isn't settled — and in this class we're keeping it unsettled on purpose.
How we'll read
At some point during the semester, we’ll go over what literary criticism is and how to read through a “lens.” Below is a quick overview of the three primary lenses we’ll use in this class.
I
Close reading
The meaning lives in the text. You’ve likely already done this at some point in your education. Close reading means you analyze the text using the text as evidence.
II
Reader response
The meaning lives in the reader. Your experiences, responses, and interaction with the text shape the meaning. This is typically what BookTok is doing, just on a massive, interactive scale.
III
New historicism
The meaning lives in the context or world around the text. In other words, the things happening in real life at the time of the text’s publication change the meaning of the text. This can be local culture, historical moment (or current moment, for our class), trends, political events, etc.