Browse Hierarchy ESH293: The Long Contemporary

This module focuses on developing critical purchase on the contemporary. It will ask, what is the contemporary? What language, theories, and frameworks do we have for thinking the contemporary? This module is not a survey of 20th and 21st century literature or a historical narrative of literary form; rather, it asks what political, social, and cultural forms are particular to the present. To interrogate this, we take a long view on the present, looking back through the post-war period, to see how the contemporary emerges. In this module, you will read critical theory and cultural history, as well as consider how literary and visual culture (including film, TV, comics, art) speak to the conditions of the present.