Literature and War in the 20th and 21st Centuries - LIR 604

This course will explore contemporary literature that responds to and depicts war and violence including the World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Lebanese Civil War, the Palestinian/ Israeli crisis, and the Iraq War among others. The objective of this course is to explore the modalities of war and violence in a range of forms and contexts and the role they play in the construction/ reconstruction of subjectivities and narratives. Writers will include Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Tim O’Brien, Ghada Al-Samman, Nuha Al-Radi, René Girard, Elaine Scarry, and others.