1. Students will gain an understanding of how post-postmodern fiction has served as a literary response to the various complications of politics, cultural difference, social change, ideology and history itself in American society and in postmodernist fiction. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.
2. Students will develop the ability to understand the particular literary language of these various fictions, while engaging with theoretical approaches specific to understanding how post-postmodern fiction develops forms of rhetorical and critical discourse that are in turn significant to issues of literary analysis and interpretation. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.
3. Students will demonstrate a comprehension of the scope of post-postmodern fiction in American literature, reflecting its development as a genre that incorporates historical moments indicative of the cultural zeitgeist of a particular era. They will demonstrate this comprehension in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.4. Students will learn how to apply theoretical approaches necessary to the analysis and interpretation of those selected fictions chosen by them for research, based on the examples that have been investigated from the course readings. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.

1. Students will gain an understanding of how post-postmodern fiction has served as a literary response to the various complications of politics, cultural difference, social change, idea and history itself in American society and in postmodernist fiction. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.
2. Students will develop the ability to understand the particular literature language of these various fictions, while engaging with theoretical approaches specific to understanding how post-postmodern fiction develops forms of rhetorical and critical discussion that are in turn significant to issues of literature analysis and interpretation. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.
3. Students will demonstrate a comparison of the scope of post-postmodern fiction in American literature, reflecting its development as a genre that incorporates historical moments indicator of the cultural zeitgeist of a particular era. They will demonstrate this comparison in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.4. Students will learn how to apply theoretical approaches necessary to the analysis and interpretation of those selected fictions chosen by them for research, based on the examples that have been investigated from the course readings. They will demonstrate this ability in research papers, response papers, in presentations, and in daily classroom discussions and in-class work.

Given that postmodernism is no longer received as the reigning aesthetic formula or rhetorical mandate for addressing lived conditions in an increasingly complicated and divided world, critics and literary scholars are confronted with a need for organizing a cogent reading model that takes into account this movement toward newer modes of literary expression. Whether neo-realist, neo-experimental, or simply extensions of postmodern sensibilities within a more objectified conception of everyday life, this literature constitutes a significant historical shift, epitomized within the fictions of the last 15-odd years, and continuing within our present moment. This course will give students a strong background in the changes informing contemporary fiction signaling this post-postmodernist movement as both a response to postmodernism, and as conceptually co-extensive with it, a dialectic operating within both fiction and criticism that maps out this literary trend in terms of its signifying gestures, and aesthetic and rhetorical agendas.

Given that postmodernism is no longer received as the reigning aesthetic formula or rhetorical mandate for addressing living conditions in an increasingly complicated and divided world, critics and literature schools are confronted with a need for organizing a cogent reading model that takes into account this movement towards newer modes of literature expression. Whether neo-realist, neo-experimental, or simply extensions of postmodern Sensibility within a more objective conception of everyday life, this literature causes a significant historical shift, epitomized within the fictions of the last 15-odd years, and continuing within our present moment. This course will give students a strong background in the changes informing contemporary fiction signaling this post-postmodernist movement as both a response to postmodernism, and as conceptually co-extensive with it, a dialectic operating within both fiction and criticism that maps out this literary trend in terms of its signing habitures, and aesthetic and rhetorical agendas.

Chuck Palahniuk – Lullaby (2002)
Don DeLillo – Cosmopolis (2003)
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Namesake (2004)
Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men (2005)
Michael Chabon – The Final Solution (2005)
John Updike – Terrorist (2006)
Philipp Meyer – American Rust (2009)
Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)
Selected critical works related to these texts and the theories of post-postmodernism

Chuck Palahniuk – Lullaby (2002)
Don DeLillo – Cosmopolis (2003)
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Namesake (2004)
Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men (2005)
Michael Chabon – The Final Solution (2005)
John Updike – Terrorist (2006)
Philipp Meyer – American Rust (2009)
Jennifer Egan – A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)
Selected critical works related to these texts and the theories of post-postmodernism