Emily Russell Carnegie 114 Am Lit Fiction:
[email protected] Office Hours: WF 10-11; TR 11:00-12:30 High and Low Culture For English majors, the department has broken up your American literature requirement into two courses: the historical survey (303) and genre study (304). By “genre study,” we mean fiction, poetry, or drama—the long-standing divisions among major classes of literature. But there are cascading definitions of the term genre, and when we speak about “genre fiction” or “genre movies,” we are much more likely to mean the collection of texts that falls under science fiction, detective fiction, fantasy, romance, the western, and horror. Despite strikingly obvious differences in conventions and setting, these texts can be grouped under the umbrella of “genre fiction” because they share features like focus on plot, a turn away from realism, and—above all—mass-market appeal. “Literary fiction,” by contrast, emphasizes craft and meaning, ooften appeals to academic audiences, and is understood as a virtuous endeavor. Genre fiction is trash. Time and tastes change, however. The novel, once considered low art suitable only for women, and “fast” women at that, has a firm place in the academy. Writers like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Edgar Allen Poe who were writing in widely-circulated periodicals are now considered classics. Our most heralded contemporary authors are exploring genre conventions in their award-winning literary fictioon: Colson Whitehead writes about zombies, Michael Chabon writes science fiction, and Cormac McCarthy is doing serial killers and the apocalypse. This course will look at examples of genre fiction, froom the popular archetypes to the high literary experiments.