3.0

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This course begins with exploring histories, tensions, and intimacies between East and West through Edward W. Said’s landmark postcolonial text Orientalism, which analyzes dynamics of hegemony, power, knowledge, imagination, and representation in ways that challenge how we think and know about the world. This lens of inquiry will take a political turn by examining issues and conflicts that arise due to imperialism and dominant paradigms of culture, difference, otherness, nationalism, and religion. In the latter portion of the course, close readings of contemporary world literatures will unfold the shared intimate experiences between East and West through the study of transformative novels, memoirs, and short stories that create forms of agency in today’s world. This will bring us beyond the limiting binary of East and West and enable new ways to think intimately and humanistically about religion/secularity, gender, nation, identity, and belonging.