What is ENGL 112 all about?
We will focus on representative writers and filmmakers who constitute a world culture of interacting diversity, telling stories that journey away from home towards new encounters, new ways of seeing, and new ways of thinking about self and others. These artists from England, America, Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Caribbean raise questions about identity, power, and development in an interdependent global economy, while raising the possibility of new forms of empowerment and community. We will ask how new identities and nations are constructed, contested, and challenged in the process of forming a globalized culture. Although all seven courses in the Global Studies program investigate problems of identity, nation, race, gender, and economics, this class focuses on the artistic representation of such concerns. We start with two 19th century novels of empire, followed by units on the Indian subcontinent, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. The thematic problems that inform the novels, poems, and films center on cultural and national identity, and on the political interaction between nations in various stages of development, migration and diaspora.