Travel, Migration, Dislocation

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

What is the relationship of movement to storytelling? Does travel across space beget stories, or do stories move us, make us travel? This course investigates the complex relationship of movement and narrative through renowned works of world literature, from Homer’s Odyssey and Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, to the recent Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights and Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist. We ask what transnational narratives do to our perception of reality, other people, and ourselves, as we consider travel narratives motivated by pilgrimage, exploration, education, and leisure, as well as stories exploring the violence of forced displacement and exile due to wars, ethnic, religious and sexual persecution, and climate change. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to engage with materials through analytic and creative assignments.