Theory of the Global South Novel

Emerging from the language of World Bank policy, the term “Global South” has gained currency in literary studies as an alternative to the outdated idea of the Third World. It has given rise to the curious case of the Global South novel, an exploration of uneven economic and political development under global capitalism. Reading contemporary novels, from the 1980s highwater mark of postcolonial fiction to an examination of globalization in the 2010s, this course turns to the bildungsroman or the novel of development to chart a paradigmatic shift from national underdevelopment to a global experience of dispossession. Thus, the course asks, how does Global South writing—particularly from South Asia, West and South Africa, and Central America—deploy the bildungsroman in new ways to highlight the intensification of global inequity and the failure of postcolonial political promises? The course simultaneously introduces students to aesthetic concepts like realism, global modernism, magical realism, and peripheral realism to thicken the stakes of contemporary literary innovation. Ultimately, we will look to both understand and question the viability of the “Global South novel” as a category of literary study.

Primary Texts

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names