ENG 219 Literature of South Asia
South Asian literature is a capacious category that contains a wide variety of languages, genres, and historical and cultural contexts. In this course, we will interrogate both the successes and failures that result from grouping the literary production of a subcontinent under one term. We will also expand the term “South Asian literature” to include texts produced by its substantial diaspora from different parts of the world—Kenya, USA, and England among others. This expansion will be done with an eye towards both the common concerns and the unique experiences that inform South Asian and diasporic literatures. Focusing primarily on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will examine a breadth of genres--novels, short stories, poetry—and works in both English and other languages in translation.