LIT 305 Home
How do we define home? What does it mean to feel or make one's self at home? Is a home a house, a place, or, to use another cliché, is home "where the heart is"? In this course, students will examine different conceptions of home in a variety of fictional works. The course will look at constructions of home as an architectural, domestic, and often gendered space. It will also ask students to think about what it means to define home more broadly as, for example, a homeland or native tongue, and, in so doing, consider how modern immigration and the processes of globalisation have changed our relationship to our homes. Throughout the course readings will invite us to reflect upon the links between home and belonging. Finally, as students read about homes that are on the move (caravans, nomads, etc.) or otherwise in flux, they will rethink the binary opposition between the home and the journey. Works read include: Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton, and Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines.
Prerequisite
LC 100 and LIT 254