Anxiety and Addiction in Contemporary Fiction

Course goals

After successful completion of the course, students:

1. Have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of ways in which cultural, social and intellectual issues figure in literary texts;
2. Are able to select and analyse relevant secondary and tertiary sources in producing original scholarly work on the topic of the course;
3. Are able to identify and apply critical concepts and literary theory relevant to the study of literature.

Content

How has prose fiction from approximately the mid 1990s onward (roughly the era after the decline of postmodernism and the rise of online media) held our fears, loathings and compulsions up to the light and changed our ways of thinking about them? This period of unprecedented online access has resuscitated the author, so we will also read essays, interviews, opinion pieces and life writing by the fictionalists concerned, alongside the journalism and scholarship of others. The novels (including excerpts from very long works) and short fiction have been published, some in experimental online formats, across anglophone literary cultures.
 

Additional information

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September. 

This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you are: 

• a student in the BA English Language and Culture enrolled in the specialisation Self, Others and the Literary World.
• a student TCS enrolled in the hoofdrichting Moderne Talen.
• a student in the BA Literary Studies.
• an exchange student and meet the course’s entry requirements.

In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.   


This course is part of the 'Self, Others and the Literary World' specialisation.

This course is equivalent to the following course:
This American Life (EN3V17003)

If you have already completed this course, you may not take Anxiety and Addiction due to too much overlap in content.


LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major, need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See for more information: https://tcs.sites.uu.nl/

Students will have the option to compose some written assessments in creative and/or journalistic modes.