Fictions of the Known World is the official blog of the class by same name at the University of Notre Dame, taught during the Fall of 2012.
The purpose of this class is to start a discussion about the relationship between literature and the “known world” – about the ways, in other words, in which fictional texts create, uphold and deform our understanding of the spatial structure of the world in which we live.
At the same time, the course also asks to what extent geographical information systems – from ancient maps to modern web technology – can aid our understanding of literature.
The class is taught as a writing-intensive “University Seminar,” meaning that all students are first-semester freshmen at Notre Dame. Blog content will be created jointly by all students and by the instructor, Prof. Tobias Boes, who teaches in the Department of German. The official course number is GE 13186 (Fall 2012). A longer description of what this course is about can be found in the “Syllabus” section of this page.