Reading & Composition

This course will focus on the relations between literature, history, and cosmopolitanism. We will read a selection of literary texts produced in the greater Atlantic region – Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and Africa – since the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas. The history of conquest, colonialism, plantation slavery, decolonization, and postcolonial migration makes the Atlantic region a zone of cultural exchange and creolization. As we read literary narratives that represent lives conditioned by this Atlantic history we will reflect on the concept of cosmopolitanism, interrogating the role that literature might play in producing transnational or cosmopolitan modes of thinking and feeling.

Primary readings will likely include The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, The Kingdom of this World, Home to Harlem, Voyage in the Dark, and White Teeth, but students should wait until the first day of class before purchasing the texts. This is also a writing intensive course with several essay assignments. We will approach academic writing as a process, and students will learn how to articulate clear and interesting arguments about the texts we are studying.