I’m finished with a draft of my Contemporary U.S. Novel syllabus for next semester. I’ve posted a copy of the full syllabus (PDF) and a little flier about the course (also PDF).

The primary texts, with dates of publication and page counts:

• David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996, 1104 pp.)
• Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998, 576 pp.)
• Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days (2001, 389 pp.)
• Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005, 368 pp.)
• Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007, 352 pp.)
• Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances (2008, 256 pp.)

There will be a handful of theoretical and critical readings as well (Jameson, Chow, Hayles, Hardt, Zadie Smith, others). The initial list of primary texts was about five times as long, but, well, semesters are short.

A post on Coetzee tomorrow, then back to DH/computational stuff for a while.