Kelly Rich

Assistant Professor of English

Contact
Email:
kr114@wellesley.edu
Department
English and Creative Writing

Current and upcoming courses

Global Fictions After Empire

ENG285

This course serves as an introduction to contemporary Global Anglophone literatures, as well as a survey of postcolonial and transnational approaches to the field. It asks: What stories do we tell to make sense of our world, and how are these narratives shaped by histories of imperialism and independence? What kinds of critique of empire do these fictions sustain, and what role do they play in establishing a sense of community, language, and place in empire’s wake? The course studies writerly engagements with residual and emergent imperial forms, bringing together key works of postcolonial and U.S. multiethnic literatures. Issues to be discussed include migration and diaspora, cosmopolitanism and globalization, human rights, racial and sexual politics, and transnational kinship.
More Info

  • Living Literature: On Writing the Contemporary

    WRIT159

    Studying contemporary literature provides us with unique opportunities for enjoying, questioning, and understanding the world in which we live. This course engages a range of genres, media, and histories, and it approaches creative writing as an evolving system of artistic production that both reflects and influences society. We will examine how literature addresses urgent problems such as economic inequality, technological change, structural prejudices, and failures of governing systems. We will also pay close attention to the ways in which these texts construct contemporaneity: some renderings of the now are haunted by the past, others aim to embody a moment that is simultaneous with its experience, while still others are defined by their orientation toward a future to come. Through this work, we will cultivate a deeper appreciation of literary and artistic production, as well as learn how to participate in and shape conversations around its meaning.

  • Representing War

    ENG277-2

    As author Viet Thanh Nguyen notes, “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” The ways armed conflicts are represented play a determining factor not only our collective memory of them, but also in the way we conduct ourselves. This course will explore a range of approaches to representing war in the twentieth century. Among the questions we will ask are: When does war begin, and when does it end? At what distance do we sense war, and at what scale does it become legible? What are the stakes of writing, filming, or recording war, or for that matter, studying its representations? We will address these issues through units on violence, trauma, apocalypse, mourning, repair, visuality, and speed. Texts will include novels, short stories, Supreme Court cases, poetry, graphic novels, films, journalism, and theory. (ENG 277 and PEAC 277 are cross-listed courses.)

  • Seminar: Imagining Justice in Law and Literature: Rights, Reparations, Reconciliation

    ENG334

    This course explores the complex relationship between literature and law, focusing on how each represents and responds to violence and its aftermath, especially in terms of memory and repair. Our goal will not be to judge the efficacy of literary and legal projects, but rather to study how they imagine and enact issues of testimony, commemoration, apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We will seek to understand how different forms of life correspond to the various legal theories and codes we’ll encounter, and how literature challenges or corroborates these specifically legal subjects, life worlds, and behaviors. We will also ask whether there are cases in which literature intervenes in jurisprudence, imagining or demanding its own model of law. The class will explore these issues in relation to existing twentieth-century juridical paradigms such as postwar military trials, human rights, reparations, and reconciliation. (ENG 334 and PEAC 334 are cross-listed courses.)