THIS IS GEP CLASS THAT WILL NOT APPLY TOWARD THE MAJOR OR MINOR AS A LITERARY HISTORY CLASS. IT CAN BE USED AS A DIVERSITY CLASS UNDER FLP.

Trickster figures will be the focus of this survey of early world literature. We will examine this complex character at various

times, spaces, and places, from the Greeks to the Mayans to Shakespeare. We will investigate how these figures work within and beyond their varied cultural contexts. Sometimes, our discussion will focus on individual characters, sometimes it may focus on authors, and sometimes the trickster element will be more implicit than explicit.

POST 1865 and DIVERSITY.

This course will examine magical realism in a variety of ways, with particular attention to cultural, social, and postcolonial contexts. We will read Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Maquez and Isabel Allende and also explore magical realism as a global phenomenon via the works of writers like Salman Rushdie and Naguib Mahfouz.