Third World Bildungsroman

This course in the contemporary international novel looks at the rise of the bildungsroman, the novelistic genre in some sense defined by the development and maturation of the protagonist, in the context of twentieth-century political, cultural, and social developments of (post)colonialism, imperialism, human rights discourse, and globalization. This course will trace some of the philosophical formulations of the teleology of human development, and the attendant notions of individuality and sociality, to study the ways in which these novels from the so-called “Third World” variously, and sometimes simultaneously, subscribe to, resist, and renegotiate the fundamental conceptions of human development through creative engagement with the bildungsroman and its generic formulations.