To bring the all too familiar everyday to our attention, artists and writers have made it strange. What happens when we view everyday life from elsewhere? While everyday culture has often been experienced as repressive and alienating in modern Western societies, a new importance assigned to everyday life was seen as liberating in Japan during the twenties and in contemporary China. The contours of the everyday are delightfully vague, and it always exceeds theorizing. For instance, is its privileged place the street or the home? Is it lived largely in institutions that regulate our daily lives, or is it lived between and outside them? Everyday commodities like sugar, the car, standardized housing, and the postcard will be analyzed. Fiction by Flaubert, Tolstoy, Kafka, Woolf, Perec, Saramago, Suri, Ha Jin, and Yoshimoto. Several films will also be discussed. Theory may include excerpts from Freud, Kracauer, Goffman, Lefebvre, de Beauvoir, Friedan, Barthes, Foucault, and Bourdieu. All readings in English. Format: seminar. Requirements: two oral reports, one 5-page paper, and a 15-page final paper or project. Prerequisites: one 300-level literature or theory course. No maximum enrollment (expected: 10).