Department of English

"Border Crossings" is a discussion-based literature course that crosses borders. Each of the writings and films read in the course describes travel that involves encounters with others and a potential for detachment and transformation. In another sense, these works negotiate the borderlands between fact and fiction, a terrain that literature has explored for centuries in ways that are both various and changing. Finally, we will chart a course across disciplinary borders in ways suitable for students with interests in literature, history, anthropology and cultural studies. A portion of each class meeting will be devoted to discussion of short excerpted passages from recent interdisciplinary scholarly work that has addressed this topic.