NEH Visiting Speaker: Paula M. L. Moya (Stanford University), “The Difference Literature Makes: Dark Aesthetics in Contemporary Fiction”

What is the power of literature to affect how we perceive the world? What difference does “difference” make in affecting our understanding of that world? And why might a proliferation of perspectives, particularly those from minority or subjugated perspectives, improve humans’ collective ability to respond to a rapidly changing world? In this talk, Moya examines the popularity of an emergent narrative form involving multiple perspectives in contemporary literature, using it to think through the development, especially among writers and critics of color, of what she calls dark aesthetics.