Studies in Contemporary Literature (461-0-20)

Instructors

Harris Matthew Feinsod

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This course focuses on a recent profusion of criticism in the "blue humanities," which we will define as the cultural study of marine and aqueous environments, especially as these spaces shape discourses of environmentalism and political geography. Although we may give some attention to urban hydroscapes, lakes, and rivers, we will mostly focus on the world's oceans. In constructing our object of inquiry, the course takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on literary theory, art history, Black studies, postcolonial studies, environmental and labor history, legal studies, and media theory. Scholars may include Sekula, Rediker, Hofmeyr, Khalili, Sharpe, Blumenberg, Blum, Bolster, and a few novels and films such as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, Claude McKay's Banjo, Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men, or Francisco Goldman's The Ordinary Seaman (to be finalized with student input).