CC: BORDERLANDS
What do we think of when we hear the term “borders”? National borders we must produce our passports to cross? Cultural, religious, or political differences that can keep us from understanding each other? Moral or ideological lines that we draw for ourselves? In today’s interconnected world, authors live in a border-free world in many ways: the literary translation market is larger than ever (crossing language borders); in the age of digital and social media, publishers and authors have more and more ways to circulate their books around the world (crossing geographical and economic borders); reading audiences are increasingly diverse and well-informed (crossing social and cultural borders). Still, we live in a global age of rising nationalism, walls, fences, detention centers, travel bans, and increasingly militarized borders, from the United States/Mexico to Israel/Lebanon to North/South Korea to Myanmar/Bangladesh. Because of sanctions, embargoes, and simply inequality and human suffering, literary works often face many of the same displacements and immobilities as the authors who craft them. So what constitutes a border-crossing in fiction of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century? What kinds of border-crossings do we welcome, which ones provoke or challenge us, and which ones do we view as violations or acts of trespass? This course examines short stories, novels, and films in the contemporary period (since 1977) that illuminate the subject of borders and border-crossing, by authors and directors from around the world including Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldúa, Amitav Ghosh, Jamaica Kincaid, Chang-rae Lee, Maysaloun Hamoud, and Ana Lily Amirpour.