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Twenty-First Century Literature and the Global City

Module description

Since 2007, for the first time in human history, more people have been living in cities than rural areas. By 2050, 75% of the world’s population will be urbanised. Today, urbanisation is driven by the economic and cultural dynamics of globalisation. The urban, the global and the contemporary are completely intertwined. Grappling with these facts, and travelling from the (perhaps) familiar locales of London, New York and Detroit, to the newer global cities of Lagos, Vancouver and Mumbai, in this module you will study recent works of American, British and Anglophone poetry, fiction, television, photography and film that aim to come to terms with the new global urban reality of contemporary life.

Module aims - intentions of the module

In this module, you will gain a new and thorough understanding of some of the most exciting works of contemporary literature and culture. Undertaking interdisciplinary research that brings together literary and cultural studies, critical geography and urban studies, you will consider how major twenty-first century works of literature and culture both reflect and critically engage the complex dynamics of global urbanisation. We will draw on foundational urban theories of the contemporary “global city,” by figures such as Saskia Sassen, David Harvey and Neil Smith, in order to explore topics including: transnational migration; inequality and the racialised and gendered “new global division of labour”; neoliberal politics and the economics of finance; gentrification and the rise of the “creative class”; the emergence of global slums and “wageless life” from Lagos to Detroit, Mumbai to Baltimore; and the explosions of global riot. In this module you will have the unique opportunity to study different national traditions and to work across various literary genres (from the novel of consciousness and lyric poems to experimental essays) and media (film, television, photography and social media) in the fast-developing field of contemporary literary studies. In engaging this challenging material, you will be asked to participate consistently in seminar discussion, deliver a 10-minute presentation, and write essays on texts/topics of your choosing.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a complex understanding of contemporary literature and culture, including major issues, concepts and debates in the field
• 2. Conduct historically and critically informed close reading of cultural texts from a variety of literary genres and media
• 3. Describe in detail some key concepts of recent urban studies, specifically concerning the political, social and economic dynamics of neoliberal globalisation

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Understand, analyse and contribute to theoretical and critical debates across multiple disciplines surrounding the relation between culture, globalisation and the city in the contemporary period
• 5. Analyse at an advanced level literary and cultural texts across a variety of genres and media and engage with their meaningful social, political and literary historical dimensions

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Demonstrate advanced written and oral skills, and develop and persuasively articulate original arguments about literature and culture in both written and oral form
• 7. Demonstrate critical thinking and analytical skills, and work with peers in a collaborative context
• 8. Conduct independent research and information retrieval and assimilation at a high level

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

• The New Global City (e.g. Lisa Robertson, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture)
• Migrant Cities (e.g. Teju Cole, Open City)
• Neoliberal Urbanism and the Contemporary Novel of Consciousness (e.g. Tom McCarthy, Remainder,Zadie Smith, NW)
• Art, Finance and the Creative City (e.g. Ben Lerner, 10:04 and Juliana Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs)
• Planetary Urbanization (e.g. Jia Zhangke, Still Life)
• Peripheral Urbanisms: Global City/Global Slum (e.g. Chris Abani, GraceLand, Rem Koolhass, Lagos Wide & Close (website), Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire)
• Wageless Life (e.g. selected episodes from David Simon et al., The Wire, Seasons 1 and 2, and photographs from Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, The Ruins of Detroit)
• Global Riot (e.g. Bhanu Kapil, Ban en Banlieu)

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as defined above. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Aaron Benanev and Endnotes, ”Misery and Debt,” Endnotes, 2010;
• Joshua Clover, Riot. Strike. Riot. (Verso, 2016);
• Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (Verso, 2007);
• Michael Denning, “Wageless Life,” New Left Review (2010);
• James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Duke 2006);
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition (UC Press 2007);
• David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), and Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Verso, 2012);
• Fredric Jameson, “Culture and Finance Capital” in The Cultural Turn (Verso, 1998);
• Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Strategic Site/New Frontier,” American Studies,  2000;
• Neil Smith, “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,” Antipode, 2002;
• Edward Soja and Miguel Kanai, “The Urbanization of the World” in The Endless City, ed. Ricky Burdett and Devan Sudjic (Phaidon, 2010).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE page: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7707
• http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit
• https://lsecities.net/
• http://thecityasaproject.org/
• http://lagos.submarinechannel.com/

Key words search

Global Anglophone literature, American literature, twenty-first-century literature and culture, the city in literature, film and visual culture, critical theory, urban studies, neoliberalism, finance, economics, politics, race, gender