English
ENGL 326 Literature of Diaspora (4)
Students in this course will examine literature from various geographic locations comprising a particular culture's (South Asian or Latin) dispersal of people, language, and culture-and study how various contexts influence and shape cultural production and representations of identity. Within these myriad sites, we will investigate the double consciousness necessary to maintain a sense of 'self' outside one's place of cultural origin, and the impact of colonization on definitions of 'home.' Our primary focus will be textual analysis, including questions of genre, language, narration, and perspective. We will also study the sociopolitical and cultural conflicts and causes for emigration that provide the fiction's contexts (in the case of South Asian diaspora: caste and religious divisions; India's partition; civil war in Sri Lanka; tensions within England, North America, and the Caribbean), and discuss how national divisions play out in the microcosm of each text. Discussions and readings of primary literature will be aided by (post) colonial discourse and contemporary multimedia.
- General Education Requirement Fulfillment: Arts & Humanities; PDE
- Prerequisite: ENGL 101W or AES 150 or ANTH 356 or ARTH 362 or CINE 110 or CLAS 171 or FREN 340 or GERM 340 or JAPN 314W or JAPN 340 or MUSC 212 or MUSC 281 or PHIL 370W or REL 113 or RUSS 242W or RUSS 245W or RUSS 250W or RUSS 320W or RUSS 325 or SPAN 340 or THTR 213 or THTR 219 or THTR 318W or WGS 134 or WGS 245
- Offering: Annually
- Instructor: Staff