More Reality: Mysticism and Consciousness in Literature and Film

In this seminar, we read literature and watch films that engage the nature of reality. Is reality solely defined by that which humans can perceive with the five senses or is there “more reality”? We read Western mystics and scholars grappling with how the divine or the mystical launches them out of normative experience, as well as non-Western writings—from Sufism to African and American indigenous texts—whose cultural and ontological understanding of the world and the cosmos always exceeded the five-sense-centered definition of reality. We engage fictional and nonfictional writings by the likes of Plato, Teresa de Avila, Kamau Brathwaite, Georges Batailles, Zora Neale Hurston, Malidoma Patrice Somé, and Rosario Castellanos. We watch films such as Robert Zemeckis’ Contact (1997) and Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016).