“This course will focus on one year in the life of the Booker Prize, the UK’s top award for English-language fiction published in the UK or Ireland. Choosing a winner is equal part media event and testament to literary merit. It carries a substantial monetary reward and is decided by a panel of celebrated judges, who over the course of a year establish both a long and a “short list” of candidates from which the winner is drawn. Though the prize is a quick route to literary stardom, it raises fundamental questions about who determines literary merit and by what criteria, about the relationship between aesthetic value and commercial worth, what it means to think about literature as a commodity, and about the rhetorical value of prize-giving. Students in the course will read one year’s short-list alongside select secondary criticism and theory, write book reviews, and form their own judging committee to choose the winner.”
Reading List:
- This Mournable Body Tsitsi Dangarembga
- Shuggie Bain Douglas Staurt
- Real Life Brandon Taylor
- The New Wilderness Diane Cook
- Burnt Sugar Avni Dosh
- The Shadow King Maaza Mengiste
Month In Review Podcasts:
