ENG 365 – JUNIOR SEMINAR
Jayawardane
TR 11:10-12:30
This course focuses on how literature—and storytelling—is an intrinsic part of travel, migration, and Diaspora.
In our course, we will focus on novels and memoirs by authors who are the embodiment of the “global
transnational” – sometimes deeply embedded in a “home” culture, but often loyal to neither nation nor ethnicity.
How does literature capture the production, circulation, and consumption of ideas, serving as key sites for
negotiating race relations and shaping constructions of socio-cultural and political identities? Through reading
novels and memoirs where a central protagonist deals with displacement and “othering”, we will explore
changing dynamics of identity and national affiliation in an era of increasing global connectivity; we will also
look at how literature and storytelling becomes part of the transnational flows of people, goods, intellectual
ideas, and spiritual beliefs across oceanic pathways and cross-continental roads. We will tackle a number of
themes and issues including: patterns of migration, representations of identity and difference, “ethnic” cultural
production, diasporic youth cultures, gendered dimensions of race-relations, relationship between class and
race, and state policies. Students will also have an opportunity to conduct independent research on these
topics as a final project for the course.
BOOKS: TBA (I recommend you do not get books on Kindle for scholarly purposes; however, if you choose to
purchase kindle editions, you must be prepared to do close reading, with attention to specific passages).