A few years ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education there was an interesting article by Michael Berube about teaching postmodern literature classes. Berube is an an eminent literary scholar, and he essentially questions whether the genre of postmodern literature even exists at all. Mostly because everything so-called postmodern literature does has been done before (in as varied forms as Tristam Shandy, Don Quixote, and even Moby Dick).
Now, debating whether X, Y, or Z text counts as postmodern is exactly the sort of thing I said we wouldn’t be doing in class. Nonetheless, Berube reaches some interesting conclusions, the most important of which is that if there is a postmodern literature that English literary critics can talk about, it is in the international literature produced as effect of imperialism, postcolonialism, and now, globalization.
I encourage you to read the Chronicle article, Teaching Postmodern Fiction Without Being Sure That the Genre Exists, and to think about some of these issues as the semester goes on.