Spring 2007 Courses

English 294-01: Travel Writing (Tarnoff)

T/TH 2:45-4:15pm, Old Main 010

In this course, we will examine narratives of travel and cross-cultural contact while attending to the categories of national, racial, and ethnic difference these texts articulate as well as construct. Primary readings will include tales of Sinbad the Sailor from The Arabian Nights, medieval rough guides to Jerusalem, English encounters with Islam, excerpts from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Travels of an English Lady in Europe, Asia, and Africa, V. S. Naipaul's narrative journey from Trinidad to Jamaica (The Middle Passage), and novels by and about Americans abroad (Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Paul Bowles's Sheltering Sky). We will also familiarize ourselves with works of postcolonial theory and gender studies.

This course will include a visit to the University of Minnesota's James Ford Bell Library, where we will look at a selection of maps and travel documents from late antiquity to the early nineteenth century. Requirements: regular attendance and participation, three essays, and a research presentation.

Spring 2007 Course Listings