This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Among the various paradigms from which diasporic writing should be distinguished is the literature of exile. Exile is often the consequence of political pressure or disaffection with a society rather than the result of the larger and often spatially and chronologically extended migratory movements which led to the emergence of diasporic communities. While both paradigms may intersect, the concerns and motivations of diasporic and exilic literatures usually differ.
A historically and culturally significant geographical, and frequently also imaginary, point of intersection between the diasporic and the exilic paradigms is the metropolis of Paris. In this module, our comparative focus will be on diasporic and exilic literatures and on the significance of the diasporic or exilic space of the French metropolis, both as production context and as informing literary production. Writers to consider include: American expatriates in 1920 (like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Djuna Barnes), in the Post World War II era (like Richard Wright and James Baldwin), and other writers who chose exile in Paris (like Heinrich Heine, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Maria Rilke, Samuel Beckett)
Total Contact Hours: 20
Private Study Hours: 280
Total Study Hours: 300
Paris campus: Spring
Assignment (5,000 words) – 100%
Indicative list, current at time of publication. Reading lists will be published annually
Any edition of the following:
Barnes, Djuna , Nightwood (1936; Faber 2007)
Ben Jelloun Tahar , With Downcast Eyes (1993)
Djebar, Assia, Algerian White (1996; Five Stories Press 2003)
Guene, Faiza Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (2004; Chatos & Windus 2006)
Hemingway, Ernest, A Moveable Feast (1936; Vintage 2000)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Explore a wide range of theoretical writing in postcolonial studies
- Critically examine diasporic writings set in Paris
-Explore Paris as a site of diasporic literary production across the ages
- Explore a wide range of theory on exile and diaspora
- Compare exilic to diasporic writing
- The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
- Have developed their academic writing skills
- Have developed their independent research skills
- Have developed their independent and critical thinking
- Have advanced their knowledge of postcolonial and diasporic writing
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