Instr:                Sukanya Banerjee
Office:              CRT 497,     229-5454
e-mail:              banerjee@uwm.edu
Office hours:    by appointment.

Course Information:                    TR       11:05-12:12      MER 116

Course Description

Through a reading of novels written by  twentieth–century  women writers located in different social, cultural, and political contexts, this course will examine the ways in which these writers respond to and articulate notions of travel, displacement, and exile.  The novels we will read were variously written and situated in  North America, England, Nigeria, Egypt, India, and Pakistan, and they foreground the notion of travel and displacement in multiple contexts. To what extent do these texts challenge or consolidate an “aesthetic of travel”?  What alternative and competing formulations of “home” and “community” are offered?
 

Novels will include Fae Myenne Ng, Bone; Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine; Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street; Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood; Leila Ahmed,  A Border Passage;  Anita Desai, Baumgartner’s Bombay; Sara Suleri, Meatless Days; and Meera Syal, Anita and Me. Secondary readings will include essays by Gloria Anzaldua, Gayatri Spivak, Sidonie Smith, Mary Louise Pratt, Inderpal Grewal, and Caren Kaplan.