BA Art History and English Literature

This course examines how the contemporary global novel engages with key cultural and political debates shaping the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through close study of four major novels, we will ask how fiction responds to globalisation, migration, economic inequality, ecological crisis, and political transformation, while negotiating the relationship between local experience and transnational structures of power.

Each novel is studied over a two-week period, giving students time to read closely, conduct research, and develop their own critical responses. Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (1998) interrogates questions of authority, masculinity, and cultural production across Latin America and global literary networks. Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) stages an unsettling challenge to dominant ethical and social norms through its rural European setting and its engagement with ecological violence. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) focuses on the lived experience of migration and racialisation, tracing how neoliberal identities are shaped across movements between Nigeria, the United States, and the UK. And Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019) situates contemporary migration within the longer histories and planetary forces of climate change, using myth and storytelling to rethink the scale of the present crisis.

Rather than offering a comprehensive survey of global fiction, the course takes these novels as case studies through which students can engage critically with key theoretical approaches, including postcolonial theory, world-ecology, and ‘planetary’ models of class, race, nationality, gender, and sexuality. Emphasis is placed on developing advanced close-reading skills, independent critical argument, and the ability to situate literary texts within broader cultural, political, and theoretical debates. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to analyse how the contemporary novel continues to function as a crucial form for imagining and contesting global modernity. 

Introduce students to a range of concepts and methods for analysing contemporary global fiction.

Employ these concepts and methods while engaging in critical debates about culture and politics in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries: debates about social and political transformation, climate change, migration, economic crisis, etc.  

Encourage and enable close reading of aspects of the form of the global novel, such as voice and narrative.  

Understand the ways in which ambitious and expansive novels from a variety of locations and perspectives represent the spaces and times of the contemporary world, in addition to exploring possible futures.  

Develop detailed readings of individual works that negotiate the connections between local experiences and transnational structures of power.  
 

Culture and Politics in the Contemporary Global Novel enhances student employability by helping students to develop a range of transferable skills such as self-organisation, self-motivation, leadership, research, evaluation, analysis, written and oral communication, critical thinking, teamwork and creativity. 

• 1 x one-hour lecture per week: lectures will introduce students to key arguments, texts and contexts.

• 1 x two-hour seminar per week: seminars are an opportunity for students to engage with the weekly text in an open, collaborative way. Active participation is expected from students on the module.  

• Weekly office hours: students will have weekly opportunities to meet the module leaders on a one-to-one basis. Office hours are also a chance to discuss ideas and plans for assignments, as well as any feedback pertaining to those assignments.  

• Canvas: detailed information about assessment, the syllabus and further reading materials will be available on the module’s Canvas pages.  
 

Demonstrate an advanced understanding of critical debates about the political dimensions of contemporary culture.  

Demonstrate the ability to deploy theoretical concepts and methods to analyse the ways in which contemporary global fiction provides distinctive interventions in urgent political questions about, for example, economic and ecological crisis.  

Demonstrate an enhanced ability to analyse closely the forms of the novel in relation to larger political contexts. 

Demonstrate an ability to articulate compellingly their own distinctive positions about how political challenges are registered and shaped by cultural forms and interventions.  

Advance persuasive, well-structured and politically informed arguments, both orally and in written work.  

Think carefully about the relationships between fiction and larger questions about political transformation, migration, climate change, etc.  

Respond knowledgeably to debates about culture and politics, while developing and articulating their own critical positions.  

Interpret and discuss the forms, origins, intentions and effects of cultural works.  

Carry out independent research that links the novel form to a range of historical and political contexts.  

Work effectively as an individual and as part of small groups. 

Organisation. Students develop ways of managing their time effectively in completing reading, seminar preparation and assessment tasks.  

Teamwork. Students are required to work cooperatively and effectively as members of small groups.  

Oral communication. Seminars provide opportunities to articulate and develop students’ own critical positions.  

Written communication. Students are taught to produce assessed work that is lucid, well-structured and cogent.  

Creativity and innovation. Students are encouraged to think in original ways about their approaches to texts and contexts.  
 

The primary texts studied on the course are Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (1998), Olg Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013) and Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019).

The Warwick Research Collective, Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World-Literature (Liverpool UP, 2015); Robert Spencer and Anastasia Valassopoulos, Postcolonial Locations: New Issues and Directions in Postcolonial Studies (Routledge, 2021); Matthew Whittle and Jade Munslow Ong, Global Literature and the Environment (Routledge, 2024); Theo D’haen, A History of World Literature (Routledge, 2024); The Routledge Companion to World Literature, ed. Theo D’haen, David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir (Routledge, 2023); The Cambridge Companion to World Literature, ed. Ben Etherington and Jarad Zimbler.