The Quiet American’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting the Thing around your Neck: The Personal and the Political

If one of the ideas behind the famous 1960s statement “the personal is political” is to suggest that how we conduct ourselves in our private lives can affect structures of power in society at large, the reverse is also true. The political/social/cultural systems in which we live affect, if not determine, the kinds of relationships we have with other people. In this seminar we will explore some of these reciprocities in works of fiction and memoir by Milan Kundera, Chimamanda Adichie, Alexander Maksik, Philip Klay, and others, with occasional complementary readings in political theory and other types of analysis. Emphasis is on collaborative inquiry and various modes of response to the material. 3 hrs. sem.