ARAB 253
Narratives of Placement and "Dis-placement" from the Global South Spring 2014
Division I Writing Skills
Cross-listed COMP 253
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This seminar deals with the theme of placement and “dis-placement” in literature from different sites in the Global South in the late 20th century. Situating the question of placement and uprootedness within multiple historical and cultural contexts in different sites in the Southern hemisphere, the location of much of the “developing world,” including the Middle East and North-Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the African Diaspora and the US-Mexico borderland, we will address the following questions: What distinguishes exile from Diaspora? What constitutes “dis-placement”? How do the experiences of up-rootedness and forced migration among Palestinian refugees and Mexican migrant workers (within Mexico and the US; with or without documents) inform our notion of home and belonging? How do the legacy of French colonialism in North Africa and the rise of globalization in Latin America, for example, shed light on the ongoing massive immigration of subjects from the Global South to the North? Our emphasis will be on working together to find avenues for expressing yourselves in writing and other media, such as creating your own blog entries about these topics. In addition to a course reader with selected stories, poems, and critical essays, readings will include: Benyamin’s Goat Days, Aimé Césaire’s Return to My Native Land, Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun, Mamud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief, and Laila Lalami’s Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3696
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation, several short response assignments (1-2 pages), one midterm paper (5-6 pages), and final paper (7- 10 pages)
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: students majoring in Comparative Literature
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARAB 253 Division I COMP 253 Division I
Attributes: ARAB Arabic Studies Electives
INST Borders, Exiles + Diaspora Studies Electives

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