Post-War Literature

Post-1945 literature is shaped by ruptures the world is still processing — the bomb, decolonization, the welfare state, the collapse of certain modernist confidences — and this seminar treats the period's fiction, poetry, and drama as ways of thinking through those ruptures rather than as a checklist of movements. You'll work closely through Ishiguro, McEwan, and Beckett alongside shorter poems and essays, building toward a paper proposal at midterm and a full term paper, with quizzes, a presentation, and steady in-class discussion keeping you honest week to week. As a senior ELIT requirement, it's where the critical vocabulary you've collected over three years gets pointed at writing close enough to be called contemporary.