Reading & Composition
WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH
This is a reading and composition course that will introduce a broad selection of texts on war and its aftermath. The readings will explore premodern Vietnamese civil war, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam wars, and the Algerian civil war. The wide selection is based on the assumption that there is something universally comprehensible about the experience of war. And yet, by reading these texts closely, we will try to tease out the social and cultural specificities that mark these different articulations. The course will address questions like: How can we talk about the legacy of war and survival ethically? What is its representability? How can we confront the horrors analytically? How do we speak of the war dead without “consuming” them?
Required Texts:
Nguyen Du: The Tale of Kieu (0300040512)
Bernhard Schlink: The Reader (B001R6D7I8)
Ha Jin: War Trash (1400075793)
Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried (0618706410)
Bao Ninh: The Sorrow of War (1573225436)
Assia Djébar: The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry: Algerian Stories
(1583227873)