SHUM 4008

Literature and Relationality

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2021-2022.

In recent years, scholars in Indigenous studies, Black studies, Asian American studies, Latinx studies, and Arab American studies have discussed variant dispossessions that influence their own cultural contexts and implicate the United States and the world at large. This course brings critical concerns in comparative ethnic studies to the field of comparative literature to study the patterns that underlie the former and their insights about national violence, race and racism, and contemporary forms of social control and marginalization. The course's secondary purpose is to craft "relationality," a theory of cultural and geographic relatability, as a comparative methodology that illuminates the similarities and affinities between Indigenous, refugee, and people of color narratives. In class discussions and assignments, students will rehearse a relational analysis as they connect the assigned readings to each other while crafting overarching observations about the dispossessive and exclusionary nature of the nation-state today.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (CA-AS, ALC-AS)

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