COML6626 - South Asian Modernisms: Literature, History, Theory

This course will take up recent scholarship in modernist studies, with a particular focus on literary cultures that were not part of the canonical modernism of the early twentieth century. The course deals both with definitions of modernism, as well as with key moments and case studies of literature. Is modernism single or multiple? How does modernism relate to realism, both at the level form as well as in literary history? What were the politics of modernist literature, especially in the context of the Cold War and the emergence of the Third World? What are the stakes of a temporal and geographic expansion of modernism beyond an early-twentieth century Euro-American modernism of the metropole, to include the literatures of the 1950s and beyond, as well as those of the formerly colonized world? Is the framework of modernism still useful today, or has it become, paradoxically, both too restricted and too diffuse? We will examine literatures in multiple geographic spaces, taking South Asia as an exemplary location and expanding to other contexts. Readings in English and in translation will include both major works of secondary literature, as well as primary texts as relevant. Possible reading clusters include the multiple literatures straddling symbolism, romanticism, and modernism of writers such as Rubén Darío and Rabindranath Tagore; the linguistic tension shared by Yi Sang N. M. Rashed, and Arun Kolatkar; and the Cold War literary debates that took place across the Third World, as seen in the works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Bhalchandra Nemade, and O.V. Vijayan. No proficiency in languages other than English is required or expected; however, when possible we will refer to texts in their original language.