ENGL 250/B (Winter 2024): FORMS OF POPULAR WRITING
How do you come to read the books that you do? Through a university course (like this one)? By a friend’s recommendation? A shiny sticker on the cover that proclaims a special prize? As Dan Sinykin has suggested in Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature (2023), “[b]ooks serve our self-image. The books we like say a lot about us, whether we know it or not” (26). This course seeks to conceptualize “popular” in a different way, mainly by asking the question: how do we choose what to read in the 21st century? This course seeks to look at the wider sociological framework that shapes the way that we read books today. By studying the publishing industry, literary prizes, social and interpretive networks, creative writing industry and television/movie adaptations, this course seeks to build a greater understanding of the contemporary literary industry in its myriad of forms. Most of the novels we will read in this course all take up the literary industry in critical and creative ways that will (hopefully!) illuminate our more practical discussions of the industry.
- Teacher: ANDY PERLUZZO