Magical realism is a visual and literary style that seamlessly incorporates fantastical or magical elements into realist fiction. In this way, magical realism challenges our usual expectations about reality and its representation. This course will explore the origins of magical realism in visual arts and its exciting revisions in diverse historical and cultural settings. Issues of individual and communal identity, social justice, revenge and haunting, traumatic past and collective memory, power struggles and political upheaval are all part of this literary style. We will look at paintings, read fiction and non-fiction, and consider film as productive contexts to examine the uneasy marriage between plausible reality and magical imagination.