Lit of the Indian Ocean World

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The Indian Ocean World is one of the first global systems to encompass a wide range of nations, markets, cultures, and languages in interaction with another, connecting an enormous geography between the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia and the Swahili Coast in East Africa. It is no wonder that the Indian Ocean has been home to a vibrant cosmopolitan literature for millennia. In this course, we will explore the historical and contemporary worlds of the Indian Ocean through a rich range of literary media, including epics, story cycles, travelogues, memoirs, and novels. We will focus in particular on how literature captures issues of exchange, circulation, migration, and encounter in this vast oceanic space that has mediated a dynamic cross-cultural traffic across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.