What is Britishness? When and where is it? How have the legacies of the British Empire determined the way people think about national belonging and exclusion? This course introduces students to novels, poetry, film, and essays that bring into imaginative focus the assumptions, rules, and habits of thought that shape national identity in modern Britain. By what means do writers play with genre to send up national tradition? How do literary works sharpen our sense of the interlocking social categories of race, gender, and class? The writers we study in this class will complicate and enrich our sense of what it means to engage with and transform national culture. We will read a range of texts—family sagas, modernist coming-of-age narrative, suburban comedy, the intricate intimacies of private and public life—by such writers as Jackie Kay, Hanif Kureishi, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Helen Oyeyemi, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith.
- Teacher: Alexander Millen