COMP 358
Across the Oceans, Across the Seas Spring 2017
Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed AFR 358 / ENGL 358
This is not the current course catalog

This course will consider literature that depicts the circulation of peoples and commodities (and often people as commodities) across the world’s oceans in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will consider such issues as the microcosm of the ship, the slave trade and the Middle Passage, indentured servitude and the Indian Ocean, the ocean as a space of flux and transformation, and figures such as the maroon, the castaway, the lascar, and the pirate. We will read texts by Herman Melville, Claude McKay, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, and Amitav Ghosh. Secondary and theoretical texts will include works by Paul Gilroy, C.L.R. James, Edouard Glissant, and Khal Torabully. The course will contribute to the College’s Exploring Diversity Initiative by exploring cultural encounters and transformations in the transitional, transnational space of the world ocean.