Literary Landscapes: Space, Place, and Travel in China and Beyond

4 credits · Undergraduate

What is a “landscape” and what does it "do"? How do landscape images and travel narratives mediate experiences of land, nature, the divine, and other peoples? How do landscapes map one's own place in the world, shaping individual subjects, cultural identities and real geographic spaces? This course explores such questions by examining landscape representation in Chinese, Japanese, and Euro-American traditions. We will closely consider selections drawn from such genres as poetry, prose description, fiction, travel narrative, maps, painting, photography and film, and consider how they both reflect and shape the topography of human experience.