WRITING THE REGIME: LITERATURE AND POLIT

What can literature teach us about politics? How can fiction inform our understanding of real life and lived experience? Can literature have an impact on political thought or play a role in shaping the formation of a state? This course will consider such questions through close readings of political theory together with literary texts from around the globe to explore how artists reflect—or reject—ideology and its implementation. Students will learn how to assess artistic responses to political imperatives and, in turn, discuss the implications and influences that art and politics have upon one another. From Plato to Putin, the course will examine concepts such as the nation state, violence, authority, religion, race, gender, and environmental concerns. Students will engage with classic texts as well as lesser-known works to trace the recurrence of political ideas—and anxieties surrounding them—across time, culture, and genre. By the end of the course, students should be able to identify and define specific lines of political thought, as well as the mechanisms of their expression in literary texts.