News and Events
Features
Featured Course: Pranav Jani’s English 564.04 - Salman Rushdie
“What people liked about the class,” said Jani, “is we took up Rushdie in the way his novels take up the world—that is, we didn’t isolate politics, history, and society, but intermingled them.” The course covered Rushdie’s majors works, including Midnight’s Children, as well as his nonfiction since 9-11. The class touched upon the controversy of The Satanic Verses, which, due to its portrayal of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, led to a call for Rushdie’s assassination. The writer went underground for many years after that, but continued to write and publish.
Jani addressed an issue that affects all single-author courses. “The problem with major author courses is, since you only read one author, you over-prioritize them. You tend to be in a Rushdie bubble,” said Jani. “In order to break out of that, you must think about Rushdie critically. With [Rushdie’s work], the texts act as though they anticipate criticism”
Most of the students had heard of and were “overwhelmingly positive” about studying Rushdie’s work. “Many had experience in American and British literature and were excited to be introduced to a nonwestern writer,” said Jani.
“Since we got to read more than one book by [Rushdie], we got a sense of his themes and styles,” said Rachel Wayne, student in Jani’s Autumn 2006 class. “We really got to know the author much better than a class which covers multiple authors. And with Rushdie, there was a lot of history that was relevant and particularly interesting.”
