Literature and Politics: A Reading Seminar on Modern Political Fiction with Dr BP Giri
- BP GiriDetails
Literature and Politics:
A Reading Seminar on Modern Political Fiction
with Dr BP Giri
Organized by Martin Chautari
Stendhal, a nineteenth-century French writer, once claimed that politics in a literary work is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. Regardless of his skepticism about the place of politics in literary works, many authors from around the world have written extensively about political subjects. In this seminar, we will study six novels from the global Anglophone tradition for their insight into political matters. Topics of discussion include authoritarianism, colonialism, nationalism, theopolitics, liberal democracy, radical politics and new social movements. The seminar will meet once a week for 13 weeks.
Reading list
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
George Orwell, 1984
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
(Participants will have to purchase these novels from the market themselves)
Course period
March 23 to June 15, 2017. The seminar meets on Thursdays at 4 pm for 2 hours.
Venue
Seminar hall, Martin Chautari
27 Jeetjung Marg, Thapathali, Kathmandu [Location map]
Tel: 4102027/4238050
Course fee: NRs 4000
Registration requirement
Bachelor’s degree or above, fluency in English, and willingness and ability to read novels. To register, please visit the Martin Chautari office by 19 March 2017 and pay the course fee.
Course instructor
BP Giri was a professor of English at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA, from 2004 to 2014. He has a PhD in English Language and Literature from University of Virginia, where he was a visiting faculty in 2015-2016. Dr. Giri has taught Anglophone literature, postcolonial studies, critical theory, and academic writing at different universities, including Kathmandu University and University of Virginia. He is the co-editor of Thinking Territory: Some Reflections (2009) and has guest-edited a special issue of South Asian Review on the subject of South Asian Diasporas. His essays have appeared in Dialog, Diaspora, Himalaya, South Asian Review, Journal of Contemporary Thought and Amerasia Journal. Currently he is at work on two writing projects.