CLST 11.11 War Stories
What is a “true” war story? This course surveys stories of deployment and return from antiquity to the present, to think about the genre of the war story, and especially to think about the self-fashioning narratives of individuals who have witnessed the realities of war and return home. Through close reading we examine the interactions of the returning soldier with his community, and the kinds of stories that soldiers will and will not tell. The historical, cross-cultural study of war stories allows the problem of homecoming to emerge more clearly as problems of the human condition across cultures and political or social organizations, the problem of homecoming emerges as a product of war. Texts may include Homer, Odyssey; Remarque, The Road Back; S. Ooka, Fires on the Plain; Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried; Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam; D. Finkel, Thank You for Your Service; P. Klay, Redeployment; B. Turner, Here, Bullet.
Cross Listed Courses
COLT 64.03