This course examines the dominant socio-cultural framework and literary and critical practices that define postmodernism in the twentieth century.  Students will explore the major debates, key ideas and texts that enable an understanding of the postmodern turn and continue to define contemporary literature in the present.  

Topics may include: postmodernity and late-capitalism; historiographic metafiction, pastiche, parody and irony; simulacra and consumerism; intertexuality; pluralism; endings and closure.  

Postmodern literature will be read alongside theory, focusing on key issues in the mid to late twentieth century such as narrative, meta-fiction, fragmentation and form, and technology to name a few.  Students will chart the relationship of postmodernism to modernism, postcolonialism and poststructuralism as well as reflect on how it is characterized by distinct aesthetic and critical theories.

The lecture session may consist of group and class discussion, mini-lectures, student-led presentations and other discussion-based activities.

Indicative texts include:  

Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 

Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition 

Linda Hutcheon, Politics of Postmodernism and A Poetics of Postmodernism 

A selection of literary texts to be chosen by the instructor.