Studies in Contemporary Literature

In this course we will read a selection of literary texts produced within the past thirty years, all of which foreground the movement of individuals or communities across national borders.   Reading this literature alongside theoretical texts, we will discuss a number of interrelated questions, including but not limited to the following: how do contemporary immigrant 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 defined and deformed by their status as immigrants? What sorts of transformations do concepts of “home” and “nation” undergo in their texts? How do these authors represent immigrant bodies as objects that circulate within transnational circuits, variously commodified, eroticized, or pathologized, variously situated in relation to legal structures of recognition? Over the course of the semester we may consider one or two films, along with the following literary texts:

Agha Shahid Ali, The Half-Inch Himalayas

Azouz Begag, Le gone du Chaâba

Tahar Ben Jelloun, La réclusion solitaire

Sakinna Boukhedenna, Journal “Nationalité: Immigré(e)”

Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge

Medhi Charef, Le thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed

Maryse Condé, Desirada

Edwidge Danticat Breath, Eyes, Memory

Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

le thi diem thuy, The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Alain Mabanckou, Bleu blanc rouge

Bharati Mukherjee, Wife