Fall 2006 Courses

English 125-01: Studies in Literature - Beyond Homeland: Overseas Travel in Literature (Çelikkol)

M/W/F 3:30-4:30pm Old Main 001

In this course, we will examine fictional and autobiographical accounts of overseas travel, moving chronologically from the eighteenth century to the present.  The reading list includes thematically diverse works in multiple genres, including novels about shipwrecks and treasure hunts, short stories about custom houses and tourists, poems about scenic hikes and immigration.  We will explore the ways in which literary works have been shaping and continue to shape our notions of homeland.  Who gets to leave behind their homeland voluntarily?  What does it mean to feel that one belongs to a homeland?  Can one have multiple homelands or none?  We will address such questions as we read literary texts featuring travel from England to Africa and Eastern Europe, from North America to Asia, and from the Caribbean to England. 

Our inquiries will foreground the political, social, and historical functions of literature.  Why, for example, did Britons tell so many stories about the far reaches of the British Empire in the nineteenth century?  Those polities whose borders our travelers cross—nation and empire—will provide us with critical threads that link our discussions of past centuries to those of the present.  We will pay special attention to the affective dimensions (desire, attachment, fear, anxiety) of the politics of nation, empire, and globalization. 

The authors whose work we will read in this course—all of whom write in English—come from diverse ethnic and national backgrounds.  Many are themselves travelers, some occasional, some perpetual. 

The reading list includes, but is not limited to, Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy.  This course is both reading and writing intensive.  Students will produce three five-page formal papers as well as some informal response papers throughout the semester.  In class, there will be mini lectures, discussions, and student presentations.

Fall 2006 Course Listings