Literature and Revolution

In this course, we will study the relationship between the individual and the state in three key revolutionary moments: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the post-war Third World movement. We will read across a variety of national traditions (French, Russian, Cuban, Martinique and Algerian) and across a variety of genres (satire, epistolary novel, short story, dystopia, among others) to study how these texts imagine a restructured society to change the human condition. We will analyze how these texts of world literature to study narrate the problems of the past, the goals of the future, and the organization of individual bodies into social bodies. We will ask questions such as: How does each revolutionary period imagine and narrate the future society it is creating? How does each imagine the changed state to ultimately change the individual? Who benefits in this future imaginary? Who suffers? How do these projects change our understanding of gender, race, and class? How do these texts address fears that the social ills of the past will not be fully ameliorated in the revolutionary transition?

Satisfies General Education Requirements:

• Group-Satisfying: Arts and Letters
• Multicultural Courses: International Cultures (IC)