Instr: Bulamur, Naz
Office: CRT 507; 229-6022
e-mail: abulamur@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 3:30pm - 4:45pm; MER 316
This course will examine postmodern fictions written in a period beginning in the 60's continuing to the present. We could also call such texts as 'metafictions'--that is, texts which foreground, even insist, on their textual status. Reading Calvino, Federman, and Olsen, we will examine how the novels lay bare their own fictionality and challenge our traditional reading strategies. These texts also blur boundaries between story telling and truth telling. The works of Federman, Olsen, Cha, and Maso imply that history, like fiction, is not objective, and that both storytellers and historians narrate selective accounts of the past. Autobiography, story, theory, and history are merged in their experimental texts. The study of postmodern fictions will enable us to explore how contemporary writers use innovative narrative techniques to reflect on gender/racial ideologies and narrate historical events such as the Holocaust and Japanese occupation of Korea. With Cha, Maso, and Morrison, we will also ask whether women 'do' 'postmodernism' differently and discuss how women experiment with fiction. Finally, we will question the legitimacy of postmodernism in relation to Foer's novel on the impact of 9/11. Essays from postmodern theorists--Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Helene Cixous, Bell Hooks--will compliment and enrich our discussions of experimental fictions.
