FYS: Exile and Return: Outcasts, Refugees, Emigrés

3 Credits.

Exile -- metaphysical, political, inner -- persists throughout human history as a concept, an experience, and its artistic representation. In Abrahamic traditions, Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden, barred from returning by angels with fiery swords. Socrates choses death over exile. Odysseus returns to Ithaca but neither he nor Ithaca are the same. The concept of exile relies on the existence of differentiated space and of borders. It also presupposes affective attachment: to be exiled is to be removed from – or, sometimes, to leave -- the space of belonging. How does exile differ from other forms of displacement? What are literary and artistic reactions to exile? Can one be an exile in one's own country/city? We will look for answers from thinkers, writers, and artists, such as Ovid, Dante, Baudelaire, Hannah Arendt, Nahid Rachlin, and André Aciman. Paradoxically, for many of them the only true homecoming is through writing about exile. Outings may include: The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Museum in Fells Point, Bakst Theater at the Evergreen Museum, Library of Congress, National Gallery, and, possibly, the Tenement Museum in NYC.