Silk Road Fictions

The course introduces students to cross-cultural comparative work, and to critical issues in East-West studies in particular. We will base our conversations on a set of texts related to the interconnected histories and hybrid cultures of the ancient Afro-Eurasian Silk Roads. Readings will include ancient travel accounts (e.g., the Chinese novel Journey to the West, Marco Polo); modern fiction and film (e.g., Inoue Yasushi, Wole Soyinka); and modern critical approaches to the study of linguistic and literary-cultural contact (e.g., Lydia Liu, Emily Apter, Mikhail Bakhtin, Edward Said). Topics will include bilingual texts, loanwords, race and heritage, Orientalism. No prior knowledge of the topic is expected and all texts will be available in English.