ENG 405 - Refugee Lit: The Self in Transit

How is the self seen, categorized, empowered and disempowered in its migrant, refugee status? In this course we will read and investigate texts that negotiate the sociopolitical, cultural, and personal frames by which the refugee/migrant is read, made visible or invisible, legitimized or not. The fluidities of self and border are as much about traversing emotional thresholds as geographical space. In a world where war, persecution and environmental change have resulted in the dispersal of millions of people we are being asked to reimagine communities, and dismantle exclusionary constructions of “Self” and “Other.”  Key issues will include how displacement contests and reconfigures paradigms of citizenship, belonging, home, and family, as well as the role of memory, trauma, and location for identities in transit.

Satisfies English major and minor requirements.
Satisfies Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Rhetoric requirement.