C# equivalent of { }.Contains() in VB

I'm working on a VB => C# translator, and I've run across some VB code that I'm not sure has a direct translation to C#.

In VB you can do something like

If {"a", "b", "c"}.Contains("c") Then ...

(and let's pretend it something useful that won't always be true)

What I'm wondering is if there is an equivalent of this in C#. The closest thing I can come up with is

if (new object[] {"a", "b", "c"}.Contains("c")) { ... }

My issue with this is that I have to define the type in C#, meaning I'd have to go with object - since I'm writing a translator, it would need to work equally well for an array of int, array of bool, array of custom classes, etc. I'm not sure that letting everything be an object instead of a more specific type is a good idea.

Is there a way to let the compiler figure out the type? Something logically like this: (I know this isn't ok, but something logically equivalent to ...)

if (new var[] {"a", "b", "c"}.Contains("c")) { ... }

so it treats the array as an array of strings and the Contains parameter as a string as well?

Side question: I'm under the impression that the VB code above treats {"a", "b", "c"} as an array of string. Is this correct? Does the VB code above treat "a", "b", and "c" as objects maybe - if so I'll use object in C# too.