ENG 616 The Art of Political Violence: Fictionalizing the Northern Irish "Troubles" (4165) (3 credits)

This course will explore how Irish novelists and short-story writers have represented "the Troubles"—a protracted period of politically motivated violence in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, which began in the late 1960s and has not fully ended today. Key questions include the following: What is the role of the artist in representing politically motivated and other types of violence? Should artists offer solutions or only pose problems? What are the moral and aesthetical stakes involved in making art out of atrocity? How might studying the fiction of the Northern Irish "Troubles" provide students in the M.A. in Writing Studies with thematic, technical and ethical insights for their own artistic investigations of the many forms of violence within their own societies?