Course Title:
How Can Fiction Change the World? Socio-Cultural Values & Storytelling
Course Description:
How can storytelling challenge and change the world around us?
What responsibilities do fiction authors have to their readers?
How do writers engage both craft and message to tell compelling stories about pressing real-world issues?
In this course, we’ll explore these questions and more through reading and analyzing contemporary fiction that engages explicitly with socio-cultural issues, including race, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and colonialism.
Tentative readings include This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila, Yellowface by R. F. Kuang, and Hell of a Book by Jason Mott.
Throughout the semester, we will dive into themes of identity, representation, and social justice, analyzing how fiction can reveal and critique cultural norms in ways that nonfiction or political discourse may not. Through discussion, reflective assignments, creative projects, and engaging with theoretical frameworks, students will examine their own roles as readers and writers within society, developing skills to analyze literature critically and create compelling, meaningful fiction.
By the end of the class, students will have produced two literary analysis essays, as well as written and edited an original short story dealing with a sociocultural issue of their choice.