! Literary Exhibition: Guidelines for your final paper and directory for ongoing projects are given on the Literary Exhibition information page.

 
! Habitat for Happiness: Each student chooses a topic to focus on from the sign-up list and record your data on the linked to results sheet. Instructions and example are given on the sign-up shared document.

  
! Contextual Timeline: Our collaborative contextual timeline is now live. Please choose 5 years to annotate.

 
! Diary: Here is a simple template you can use for journaling in this course. Download the file, save it under a different name, make it your own with your entries, then upload it on your Chula Office 365 cloud or other shareable online space. Update it regularly, like Adrian Mole and Lewis Jones, with news (personal and global), images, audio and video clips, other hyperlinks. Send me the URL of your daily log/scrapbook to be included in our diary directory.

! Fireside Readings: Online live fireside readings happen every weekday at 8:00–8:30 p.m., beginning Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at this Zoom Meeting Room. See the reading schedule and/or sign up to read. Drop in if you'd like to listen to a particular selection and talk about it.

! Course Blackboard: Currently the five novels/novellas are available for you to download as PDFs from the folder "Novels" on our course Blackboard Ultra. Short stories and articles are in the folder "Course Packet." Media and supplementary reading are in their respective folders.

Course Description: British fiction from the twentieth century to the present has experienced great changes and produced wide-ranging impact. Ideas about fictional forms, authorship, readership and Britishness are defined, redefined and questioned. The resulting literature traveled far and wide, jump-starting the modern literary scene in many countries including Thailand. We will examine a range of fiction and discuss the issues it raises about literary craft, production and media, values and context, scholarship and new directions. We will read both well-known and lesser known authors whose work and ideas have influenced, defined and interrogated British fiction such as Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, E. M Forster, Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, A. S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, and Aminatta Forna.

Class Time: T 2:30–4:00, Th 2:30–4:00

Class Location: Live class sessions (classcasts) will be conducted via Zoom. Links to each session are provided on our detailed schedule.

Required Texts: All course reading is available in digital and hard copy. PDF files of required and supplementary material are on Blackboard. Paper copies of the packet and all novels are available for purchase from khun On (Call 09 2621 0992 to order). Her shop is near the security desk of Maha Vajirunhis Building (yellow starred on the map), Faculty of Science; hours: M–F 8–5 (COVID-19 guidelines may affect these regular times. Call to check or arrange for delivery with khun On.) All novel titles are in Chula libraries. For the Arts Library system during work-from-home period, search your item on OPAC as usual, and make your book request by clicking Arts Book Request below the status indication. Items requested before Thursday noon can be picked up at the ID card gate to the Maha Vajiravudh Building library that Friday. You are welcome to acquire your own copies from your favorite book vendors. The publisher and year information given below are editions used in this course.

• Course packet (short stories, excerpts and essays)
  
• Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line (1917, David Campbell, 1991)
  
• George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945, Signet, 1946)
• Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill (1982, Vintage, 1998)
• Julian Barns, The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape, 2011)
• Aminatta Forna, Happiness (Bloomsbury, 2018)
  

Detailed Schedule

Syllabus 

Requirements and Expectations

• Reading Responses: Aside from occasional writing of other kinds, reading responses are useful exercises that attempt to explain, discuss or comment on a question that you pose about the reading. No more than 300 words is expected per response but it should be well thought out. See samples.

• Attendance and Participation: Discussion of the texts will be a big part of this class and students are encouraged to express their opinions, share observations and ask questions. Take notes as you read and write down your ideas and questions. Come prepared to discuss the reading material.

• There will also be short presentations, a midterm, a final exam, and a final paper (5–7 pp.).

• Boxall, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction: 1980–2018. Cambridge UP, 2019.
  

• Bradbury, Malcolm. The Social Context of Modern English Literature. Blackwell, 1971.
  

• Bradford, Richard. The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction. Blackwell, 2007.
  

• Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction. Cambridge UP, 2004.

• "What Is Plagiarism?," Georgetown University (friendly explanation of plagiarism with examples; you  will be severely penalized for plagiarism in this course)

• "Writer's Guide", University of Victoria (well-organized, easy to follow guide with examples)

• "Online Writing Lab," Purdue University (includes the writing process, grammar and mechanics, literary analysis and criticism, writing about poetry)

• Michael Engle, "How to Evaluate the Information Sources You Find," Cornell University

• "The MLA Style Center," Modern Language Association

• "Proofreaders' Marks," Marquette University
  

• Timelines

• "Timeline," World History, World Digital Library
  

• "World Wars," BBC
  

• "1945 to Present," BBC

• "City Timeline," City of London

• Chris Michaelides, "Chronology of the European Avant Garde, 1900–1937," British Library (2007)
  

• History

• "Home Front: World War One," BBC

• "The Making of Modern Britain," BBC

• Modernism

• "What Was Modernism?," Victoria and Albert Museum

• "Modernism," Tate

• "The Twentieth Century: Introduction," The Norton Anthology of English Literature

• "Modernist Experiment: Overview"
  

• Postmodernism

• "What Is Postmodernism?," Victoria and Albert Museum

• "Postmodernism," Tate

• Gary Aylesworth, "Postmodernism," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2015)

• Jay David Bolter, "Posthumanism," The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (2016)