CONF 250: Narratives of Conflict

Imaginative fiction can prompt self-reflection, expose varied perspectives and experiences, reflect social understandings of conflict, and allow us to examine, at a distance, the challenges and dynamics of conflict. This course will focus on themes reflecting perennial concerns related to identity, the human condition, collective violence and social values. Examining conflict through literature will challenge, complicate, and elaborate our understanding of human conflict and experience. The course begins with a discussion of how to read/interpret texts as a mechanism to understand social narratives of conflict, a topic that will recur throughout the course. We then read and discuss roughly one novel every two weeks, as well as short stories, poems, and a play. The last part of the course is spent writing original stories about conflict and participating in a writer’s workshop. Offered by Conflict Analysis & Resolution. Limited to three attempts.