Contemporary American Fiction in the European Classroom Teaching and Texts

This book offers insight into the ways students enrolled in European classrooms in higher education come to understand American experience through its literary fiction, which for decades has been a key component of English department offerings and American Studies curricula across the continent and in Great Britain and Ireland. The essays provide an understanding of how post-World War II American writers, some already elevated to ‘canonical status’ and some not, are represented in European university classrooms and why they have been chosen for inclusion in coursework. The book will be of interest to scholars and teachers of American literature and American studies, and to students in American literature and American studies courses.

1. Introduction: American Fiction Abroad.- Part I: Why Teach …?.- 2. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy in Hungary: Racialized Discourse in the Classroom.- 3. Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown in Europe as an Evaluative Tool of U.S. Race Relations: “When you think American, what color do you see?”.- 4. Octavia Butler at a Swedish University: Gender, Genre, and Intercultural Encounters.- 5. John Updike in Serbia.- 6. Contemporary American Women Writers in Romania.- Part II: How to Teach …?.- 7. Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace: Contextualizing the “Systems Novel” in Estonia.- 8. Donald Barthelme at Sorbonne University: Narrative, Internet Memes, and “The Rise of Capitalism”.-  9. The (Post)Apocalypse in Hungary: American Science Fiction and Social Analysis.- 10. Gloria Anzaldúa at European Universities: Straddling Borders of Fiction and Identity.- Part III: What Lessons Might Be Gained by …?.- 11. Teaching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah in Ireland: “If you don’t understand, askquestions”.- 12. Teaching Philip Roth in Denmark: It’s Complicated.- 13. Teaching Post-Black Aesthetics and the Coming-of-Age Novels of Danzy Senna and Colson Whitehead in Portugal: Reconsidering the Gap.- 14. Teaching Marilynne Robinson, Democracy and the Mystery of American Belonging Through the PostChristian Eyes of Millennial Brits: “Homesick for a place I never left”.- 15. Teaching Jesmyn Ward and William T. Vollmann in Finland: Genres of Environmental Justice.- Part IV: What Light from the Recent Past?.- 16. A Backward Glance o’er American Fiction in French Academia.- 17. American Literature: A Tale of Two Polands.- Part V: Additional Resources.- 18. Incorporating One’s Own Literary Criticism into the Curriculum: The Teachable Essay via John Updike’s Short Stories.- 19. Sources for Further Study.

Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University, USA. He is the author or editor of twenty scholarly books, including Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century (2017) and Victorian Environmental Nightmares (2019).