ENGL3822 · English
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
What is an author and who gets to be one? Where is the line between fiction and life? This course will explore these questions by reading a range of 20th- and 21st-century texts that play with the idea of their own authorship: our readings will cover British and Irish modernism, Caribbean epic, postmodern experimentation, and the contemporary genre of autofiction. Alongside the question of authorship, we will consider larger questions about the nature of fiction and its role in society: what changes when we read something as literature, and how does fiction-making play a role in our personal and collective identities? Readings may include works by Luigi Pirandello, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Derek Walcott, Claudia Rankine, Rachel Cusk, and Ben Lerner.
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
4.8 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.5 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
4.5 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
4.6 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
~5
hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect the evaluations connected to this course.
No instructors match those filters.
Across time
Available section-level results across semesters.
Spring 2024
1 section