ENGLISH 788 / Writing Diaspora: Literature, Community, and Displacement

3 unit(s)

D. Coleman (cross-listed as CULTR ST 788 and GLOBALST 788)

This course examines critical debates in contemporary cultural studies over the best way(s) to conceptualize the experiences of people who have left their places of birth or places of cultural origin in an era of “globalization.” It examines the representation of these experiences in literary works (memoirs, short stories, poems, and novels) by M.G. Vassanji and Dionne Brand about people who move between cultural locations on the assumption that literary works condense and intensify the questions and problems that characterize such cross-cultural movements.