- Enseignant-e: Eliis Maria Peters
This seminar will explore how borders and boundaries within oneself,
between the self and other, between nations, and across time and space
create and enact transition, transgression, and transcendence. These
terms evoke different narrative stages. 'Transition' describes the
process of traversing, with the inherent notion that there is another
side that one can inhabit; 'transgression' also implies the violation of
laws and conventions; and 'transcendence' suggests a vertical movement
of rising above, going beyond. How do authors translate the borderline
as a space one can inhabit into narrative form? Is transcendence an
alternative construction to a reality inevitably made of boundaries? We
will reflect on these and other questions through contemporary fiction
by Bessie Head, W.G. Sebald, Anuk Arudpragasam and a poetry collection
by Yousif M. Qasmiyeh.