Your education in literature in Eastern’s department has mostly been organized around the idea of literary periods. In this course we will examine the reasons for this kind of organization of literature, the problems with it, and what you can do with literary history.

Overview. The course will be organized in three sections. In the first, we will reflect on your (our) individual experiences with literary history through the English major. In the second, we will explore the field called "book history" or "history of authorship and printing" as a lense to focus our thinking about literary history. In the final section of the class, each member of the class will read two book-length works of twenty-first century literature and will write an essay using some aspect of literary history to illuminate one or both of these works.

Syllabus. Coming over the summer--as soon as I have the syllabus together, I'll post it in this space.

Exploring options for the final reading assignments. When you feel like browsing some books this summer, why not start looking for books that might be among your choices for the final project?

Here are some guidelines for choosing books: Any genre is acceptable, but you will need two book-length works. So you might consider novels, collections of short fiction by a single author, collections of poetry by a single author, plays, memoirs, or collections of essays by a single author. The first publication of the work in English must have occurred in 2000 or later. At least one of the two books should stretch you out of your comfort zone in some way. No multi-author collections, please. Translated works are perfectly welcome.