Courses

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake – Robert Penn Warren. For as long as we have existed, humans have expressed ourselves through fiction, whether as stories spoken around a bonfire, etched onto cave walls, or printed in books. This course examines the intricate relationship between history and fiction, exploring several major historical “moments” over the past century through storytelling. What do these works of fiction tell us about the societies that anchored them? What insights do these stories reveal about the lived experiences of people experiencing major sociopolitical transformation? Why did the authors choose to document social realities or imagine unrealized alternatives through the medium of fiction? How has storytelling been used to interpret, shape, and sometimes distort our understanding of historical events by both those in power and the many without? This course explores these questions through four thematic lenses: power and resistance, cultural identity, memory and trauma, and social change. Drawing on a diverse range of fictive texts from various historical contexts beginning the early twentieth century, including British India, colonial Southeast Asia, interwar Europe, Civil Rights-era United States, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, students will critically analyze how fiction reflects and reconstructs history.