Strange Fiction, Strange World: An Introduction to Postmodern Literature &
Culture
Course Proposal for Duke University TIP East Campus
Summer 2007
Instructor: Mr. Robert Martinez
Required Texts & Materials
 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
 Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
 Paul Auster, City of Glass
 Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
 College-ruled notebook, folder with pockets, floppy disks, and CD-RWs
(writeable/rewriteable CDs).
Possible Film Screenings
The Nazi Officer’s Wife (A&E documentary on the life of Edith Hahn)
Francois Ozon’s Swimming Pool (2003)
Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)
Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda (1990)
Course Description
In this course, students will explore the worlds of dystopian literature. The course will begin with
a discussion of the dystopian model of fiction in general—its tendency toward envisioning
oppressive societies and regimes—and students will reflect on why writers create such alternative
models of the world. We will also explore more deeply just what the term “dystopian” means,
and how it applies to other forms of art: painting, sculpture, popular music, and film. We will
read and study two widely known and central novels of the dystopia, George Orwell’s 1984 and
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We will then challenge our perceived models of dystopian
fiction by reading Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street, a novel about life in the contemporary
Irish city of Belfast. We will examine a variety of literary techniques in each novel (e.g., the use
of metaphor, symbol, language, moral fable, and general novel structure) and will consider how
these techniques help us understand issues of identity, self-development, social problems,
struggles of the individual against society, and larger theoretical questions concerning genre.
To assist our investigations into these novels, students will learn about and research different
historical moments of the twentieth century that profoundly influenced the creation of literary
dystopias. We will open our historical inquiry by studying the life of Edith Hahn, a Jewish
woman who survived life in Nazi Germany by marrying a Nazi officer; we will then read Elie
Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust, Night. In particular, we will study the rise of Nazism during
World War II, the spread of communism under Stalin (Soviet Union) and Mao (China), the
development of the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism in the United States, the African-American
response to Civil Rights issues in the U.S., and the rise of feminism and its reaction to patriarchy
in the late twentieth century. Students will analyze these historical conditions and discuss their
influences upon the novels. Students will also learn how to analyze visual representations of the
dystopia by examining artistic works of twentieth-century painters.
Activities and Assignments
This course is reading and writing intensive. Daily class sessions will involve reflective journal
writing, critical reading, analytical discussion, library research and presentations, workshops on
creative and scholarly writing, film analysis, and guest lectures by professional scholars.
An in-class essay test will be given on each of the novels. Students will also be required to
complete and turn in a final project at the end of the course. They will have two options for the
final project: (1) Students may write a scholarly paper on one or more of the novels studied in the
class, or (2) they may write a short story, play, or film script that creates and examines a dystopia
of their own making.