WiSe 14/15: Postcol. Lit.a.Variet. of Engl.-T-Literature and Alterity
Jennifer Wawrzinek
Information for students
Comments
This course examines the complex and highly contingent processes governing the creation and/or decreation of the self in its relation to otherness, or alterity. Over the course of the semester students will read a selection of recent critical theory in conjunction with essays, poems and novels from the the long eighteenth century in order to examine the ways in which depictions of alterity have served as either the ground of an empowered self and nation, as the drive of political resistance and contestation, or as the mode upon which ethical claims of openness, obligation and responsibility are made.
NB: This course is offered in conjunction with MA-HS 17400 "Romanticism, Empire and the Subject". Students must enrol in both components of the module in order to participate in either course.
Set Texts: Derek Attridge, The Singularity of Literature. Routledge, 2004. Blanchot and Derrida, The Instant of My Death & Demeure: Fiction and Testimony. Stanford UP, 2004. William Godwin, Caleb Williams. Oxford World's Classics, 2009
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Regular appointments