- Trainer/in: Deborah Lea Madsen
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION
In this seminar, we will explore the Palestinian experience of trauma, displacement, and diaspora through Ibtisam Barakat's award-winning autobiographical narrative for young adults, “Tasting the Sky” (2016) and two internationally-acclaimed novels by Susan Abulhawa: “The Blue Between Sky and Water” (2015) and “Against the Loveless World” (2020). Using the tools of settler-colonial theory, we will focus on the ways in which these texts engage the key dialectic of home versus diasporic space, within the historical framework of Anglo-American imperialism and Israeli Zionism. Topics to be discussed include ethnic and transnational identities; memory, nostalgia, and generational post-memory; family relations in exile; and the diasporic construction of the image of home/homeland. We will also study how literary language can be used to represent trauma, as well as how the use of narrative setting and narrative time can evoke the complexities of home and exile.
PRIMARY TEXTS
Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World (2020)
Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015)
Ibtisam Barakat, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood (2016)
SEMINAR REQUIREMENTS
1. Weekly reading assignments. Students who do not complete the weekly reading assignments will be marked as absent from the seminar.
2. Regular attendance: seminar attendance is compulsory and presence will be recorded each week. Absences can be compensated by completing additional work (e.g. an additional oral presentation) and absences that are justified by a medical certificate will be excused. Students who accumulate more than 2 unexplained absences will not be able to validate the seminar.
3. An oral presentation.