Introduction to Comparative Literature

In this course we will consider a variety of written and cinematic texts, all of which foreground the movement of individuals or communities across national borders. Over the course of the semester, we will discuss a number of interrelated questions: how do contemporary writers attempt to come to terms with the profound historical ruptures and geographic displacements brought about by the experience of transnational movement? How do they seek to render into language and narrative the confusion of conflicting cultural structures, and in what ways are their characters recast by their status as immigrants or refugees? How do these authors  represent bodies as objects that circulate within transnational circuits, variously commodified, eroticized, or pathologized? How are the categories of gender and sexuality inflected by histories of migration? In our discussions, we will consider the specificity of each text while remaining open to insights made possible by reading comparatively. In other words, our goal will not be to synthesize a monolithic theory of literature and displacement, but rather to analyze individual texts while remaining attentive to common textual strategies, formal elements, and practices of representation. Texts under consideration will likely include: lê thị diễm thúy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For; Edwige Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory; Azouz Begag, Shantytown Kid; Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy; Leila Sebbar, Shérazade; Moshin Hamid, Exit West; Ousmane Sembène, “The Promised Land”/La noire de...; Marie N’Diaye, Three Strong Women; Knight/Frears, Dirty Pretty Things.