Topics will vary by semester. Consult the course descriptions provided by the Department each semester for current offerings. EXAMPLE: Fall 2008 Contemporary Fiction. In an age of digital media, what is the state of American fiction? This course course will look at recent American fiction, mostly the novel, roughly from 1980 to the present. This era is as yet undefined, so one purpose of the course and your research will be to lend it some definition. The twentieth century is usually defined as modernist and postmodernist; this course will investigate writers who came to the fore after postmodernism (writers like Thomas Pynchon and Donald Barthelme). We will read stories and novels by writers beginning with Raymond Carver and concluding with Junot Diaz.