Fiction as Social Theory: Memory, Domination, and Resistance in the Novel

SOCIOL 1276 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

How can novels help us think sociologically about memory, power, and social change? To answer this question, this course treats narrative fiction as a site of social theory. We will read works of fiction that span different times, places, and crises—from early twentieth-century America and the legacy of genocide to the plantation past of U.S. slavery, small-town horror, postcolonial Egypt, and a biotechnological dystopia. Alongside these texts, we will study contemporary sociological theories of generations and “zeitgeist,” collective memory and trauma, freedom and domination, discipline and biopower, stigma and self-presentation, and postcolonialism and collective mobilization. Through close reading, discussion, and analytical writing, students will use scenes from these novels as empirical “data” for sociological interpretation. Assignments will ask students to read fiction not as a mere illustration of theory, but as a mode of theorizing in its own right. No prior experience with social theory is expected or required. The course is intended for anyone interested in thinking seriously about fiction and society.