Instructor: Leah Mirakhor
Seminar: Wednesday 2:30-4:20 pm
Film Screenings: Occasional Tuesday Evenings, Time and Location TBD
This course examines a series of transnational literary texts and films that illuminate how people, are forced or choose to become mobile, leaving their homelands, and remaking home away from their native countries. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have produced massive displacements due to wars, genocides, racial, ethnic and religious conflicts, economic and climate change, among other factors. Our course focuses on several texts that explore questions of mobility, home, nation, and self, in the context of specific historical events such as the Holocaust, civil rights movements in the U.S., internment, the Indian partition, African decolonization, and Middle Eastern/Arab ethno-religious conflicts and wars. We look at how different collective and individual mobilities, in different contexts point to possibilities and limitations of creating, contesting, self and cultural agency in the diaspora. In his seminal work, Theodor Adorno remarked that “the highest form of morality is to not to feel at home in one’s home,” as a way to maintain vigilant ethical, moral, and psychic presence in a world that contests (sometimes violently) what constitutes a nation, home, and family and who can belong to them. Our objective will be to debate and develop the ethical, political, geographic, and imaginative articulations of home in an era of mass mobilities and geo-political crises.
Our course will coincide with Yale University Art Gallery’s Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope. Details on our visit TBD.
Assignments:
Our weekly readings will average 150 pages and consist of a primary text (novel, memoir, graphic novel) accompanied by secondary texts (essays on exile, diaspora, nostalgia, mourning, and displacement). Film screenings will take place the Monday evening before class. As a part of the participation grade, students will be expected to submit weekly questions and responses (250- 350 words) regarding the readings (and film screening when relevant) by 9 am on the day of class meetings. In addition, students are required to write three papers. For the first two papers (5-6 pages each), students will be expected to examine an intersection of keywords/key themes in one of the primary texts discussed in class, while incorporating one of the secondary essays. Assignment details on close reading and literary analysis to follow. For the final paper (approximately 13-15 pages), students will choose a text of their choice that highlights some aspect of the concept of home from the perspective of an exile or migrant. The paper will also have to incorporate two secondary sources. We will devote class time to learning how to conduct research and incorporate sources into essays.
Expectations:
Our course will rely on active, engaged and respectful participation from all students. As such, for each class you must: 1) Complete the reading. 2) submit (in writing) a discussion question for each assigned reading and film and conduct a brief close reading of a major issue. 3) Be a thoughtful, respectful, and supportive class member. Using electronic devices (apart from taking notes) or arriving late will result in a marked absence for the day. Because the course only meets one day per week, attendance is critical and mandatory. Of course, I understand that emergencies/illnesses/unavoidable life issues arise, but I expect you to communicate these with me so that we can arrange accordingly. Additionally, we will expect that you familiarize yourself with Yale College policies and principles for citing sources. We will discuss proper citation, conventions, and plagiarism, and use writing.yalecollege.yale.edu/using-sources as our reference. If you have any questions throughout the course, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Grading:
Class Participation 20% First Paper 20% Second Paper 20% Final Paper 40%
Texts:
Danticat, Edwidge. Brother, I’m Dying. Vintage, 2008.
Mengestu, Dinaw. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears. Riverhead, 2007.
Otsuka, Julie. When The Emperor was Divine. Knopf, 2002.
Sebald, W.G. The Emigrants. New Directions, 1997.
Sattouf, Riad. The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East 1978-1984. Metropolitan, 2015.
Chang, Jade. The Wangs Vs. The World. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
*All other readings are available as PDF on canvas.
Films:
The Avalon. Directed by Barry Levinson. TriStar Pictures, 1990.
I Am Not Your Negro. Directed by Raoul Peck. Magnolia, 2016.
The Namesake. Directed by Mira Nair. Fox Searchlight, 2007.
The Visitor. Directed by Tom McCarthy. Groundswell Production, 2008.
Fire at Sea. Directed by Gianfranco Rosi, 01 Distributions, 2016.
Schedule of Meetings
*Schedule subject to slight modifications
August 30 (Week One) Introduction
Review of syllabus, course readings, assignments and expectations
Handout: “Keywords” and Survey of major themes and events of displacement in twentieth and twenty-first century
September 6 (Week Two) The Emigres of WWI & II: Ideas of home and nation. Aesthetics of fragmentation, displacement, and war
Readings discussed: Eva Hoffman, “The New Nomads” Edward Said, “Reflections Exile” W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants 1-145 and John Urry, “Introduction,” Mobilities
September 13 (Week Three) The Holocaust & Making Art: Homelessness and trauma
Readings discussed: Finish Sebald. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees”. Andre Aciman, “W.G. Sebald and The Emigrants” and Tim Creswell and Peter Merriman, “Introduction: Geographies of Mobility”. Screening: The Avalon
September 20 (Week Four) A Stranger in Your Own Village
Interned at Home, Outcast from the Nation
Readings discussed:Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine 1-48 Resource, James Baldwin, “Stranger in The Village”
September 27 (Week Five)
Readings:Otsuka, 48-144, Teju Cole, “Black Body”, and Carollo N, Shoag D, “The Casual Effect of Place: Evidence from Japanese American Internment”. Screening: I Am Not Your Negro
October 4 (Week Six) The Empire Strikes Back: Post WWII Promises & Perils
*Paper One Due
Assimilation, The 1965 Immigration Act, and the promise of the multicultural dream
Readings: Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third & Final Continent”, Salman Rushdie, “Imaginary Homelands”, Nguyen, “On Being a Refugee”, Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. The World (1-143)
October 11 (Week Seven) Intergenerational conflicts, hybridity, and cultural translation
Readings: Chang, (143-354), Screening: The Namesake
October Recess 10/17-10/23
October 25 (Week Eight) On Masculinity and Grief: Fleeing Home
Postcolonial Africa & The Ethiopian Red Terror
Readings: Andre Aciman, “Lavender” & “Shadow Cities” and Mengestu, “The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears (1-101) and Ralph Callebert, “African Mobility and Labor in Global History”.
November 1 (Week Nine) Memory & Trauma
Readings: Mengestu, The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears (102-228)
November 8 (Week Ten) Deportation, Detention, and Borderlands
*Paper Two Due
The politics of sanctions and asylums: families across borderlands
Readings: Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying 1-150
November 15 (Week Eleven)
Readings: Finish Danticat. Screening: The Visitor
*November recess 11/17-11/27
November 29 (Week Twelve) While the World Watches: Refugees in the 21st Century
Arab/Muslim migrants, terror, and the refugee crisis
Readings: Riad Sattouf, The Arab of the Future, all. Hisham Matar, “The Return”
December 6 (Week Thirteen)
Conclusions
Klaus F. Zimmerman, “Refugee Flows, Labor Mobility and Europe”
Screening: Fire at Sea
*Classes end 12/8: 12/16 Deadline for Final Papers
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.