Course information

Title

Migration, Diaspora, Exile - A Survey of Postcolonial Theory

Lecturer

Ahmed Joudar

Course code

currently undefined

Credit

3

Location

Petőfi avenue

Time

Wednesday 10 - 12

Course description

Short description

Migration, exile, and diaspora have undeniably brought about profound changes in the demographics, cultures, epistemologies, and politics of the post-colonial world, whether the sole emphasis on displacement--as opposed to indigeneity, belonging, or residence--is true to the postcolonial condition, remains an issue. It is an undisputed historical fact that the past century has witnessed the large-scale displacement and dispersal of populations across the world as a result of major political upheavals, among them the two European wars, decolonization, and the Cold war. Following on these, globalization, spurred by free trade and increased capital flows, and new technologies of communication, information, and travel has accelerated the movement of people, commodities, ideas, and cultures across the world.

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction and overview.

Week 2: Exile and modernism.

Texts: Edward Said(Reflection on the Exiles), (Intellectual Exile); Madhushri Kallimani (Exiled At Home)

Week 3: Immigration

Texts: Mary McCarthy (A Guide to Exiles, Expatriates, and Internal Emigrés); Film: Dirty Pretty Things

Week 4: The Concept of Diaspora

Texts: Wahlbeck, O.(The Concept of Diaspora as an Analytical Tool in the Study of Refugee Communities); Michel Beine (Diasporas); Mark Shackleton (Diasporic Literature and Theory)

Week 5: Identity questions (assimilation, acculturation)

Texts: Stuart Hall (Cultural Identity and Diaspora); Smadar Lavie (Writing against identity politics: An essay on gender, race, and bureaucratic pain)

Week 6: Affective dimensions of migration and diaspora (homesickness, memory, nostalgia).

Texts: Naim Kattan (The Farewell of Babylon)

Week 7: Displacement and homelessness

Texts: Naipaul (The Mimic Men)

Week 8: Autumn holiday

week 9: Orientalism and Post- Orietanalism

Texts: Edward Said (Orientalism), Hamid Dabashi (Post-Orientalism)

Week 10: The cultural diversity and the cultural differences.

Texts Homi Bhabha (The commitment to theory)

Week 11: Minorities and multiculturalism

Texts: Homi Bhabha (The Location of culture); Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient).

Week 12: Borders and Borderlands, mixing, hybridity.

Texts: Homi Bhabha(The Location of culture); Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses).

Week 13: Trancultualism in the Global Age

Texts: Mikhail Epstein (Transculture: A Broad Way between Globalism and Multiculturalism); Gisela Welzf (The Transnationalization of Cultures)

Week 14: Conclusion and evaluation

Semester

2018/2019 1^st

Requirements

Requirements to get the grade

Grading: Students in this course are expected:

1. to participate in the classroom discussions (30%);

2. to offer oral presentation based on their own research on any of the topics (30%)

3. to submit a 6-page research paper due by 30 November, based on any of the works in the list. (40%)

Students are expected not to miss more than 3 classes

Reading list

Suggested reading list