Forms of Literature: Reading the World Bank

What does postcolonial literature have to do with economic development? How can literature and literary analysis help us better understand global economic inequality? This course examines the role that literature and literary thinking have played in legitimating, critiquing, and revising the 20th and now 21st century project of "development." Reading global works of literature and film alongside documents such as the World Bank's first "mission" report and its 2000 World Development Report, we'll study how narrative shapes issues like poverty and industrialization, international aid and (neo)colonialism, and economic justice and debt relief.