First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-20)

Instructors

Laiba Niaz Paracha

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-319: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Literatures of Home and Exile

In a world shaped by the rise of nation-states, dreams of global unity, and "melting pots" of cultural diversity, we still find ourselves haunted by the figure of the exile—the migrant, the refugee, the stateless traveler, the border-crosser. This course invites you to explore how the stories we tell ourselves about home and displacement challenge our deepest assumptions about identity, nationhood, the cost of separation, and what it means to belong. We begin with the archetype of the homeward-bound Odysseus and unravel how the "exiled hero" has been reimagined across times and cultures. How do these figures disrupt national myths? What new forms of storytelling—literary, visual, and performative—do we need to truly grasp the experience of exile?

Together, we'll read, watch, and travel alongside protagonists of diverse genders, sexualities, and abilities as they navigate perilous seas, scorching deserts, and today's heavily surveilled borders. In the second module, we turn the idea of "heroism" on its head, examining how labor, gender, and the politics of belonging reshape our understanding of courage and resistance. Our texts span genres and geographies—from short stories such as Ghassan Kanafani's "Men in the Sun" and Albert Camus' "The Stranger", to the exile poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Nazim Hikmet, to cinematic representations of otherness. This seminar is not just about reading stories—it is about rethinking the very idea of home in a world where movement, loss, and resilience define so many lives.

Learning Objectives

This course asks students to think about the interlinked questions of home, migration, and displacement using frameworks of comparative literary and cultural studies. Over the quarter, we will work with a range of narratives—poems, stories, essays, films, and images—in order to think not just about how we can grapple with questions of home and displacement, but in fact, how essential these questions have been in the formation of non-national, humanistic methods of comparison. The texts we work with will also lead us to the question of contexts: where does a text come from? How does it offer meaning to those who read or view it? What kinds of pasts and presents inform a story? What are the various ways of interpreting a text? How do experimental texts by writers of color destabilize conventional modes of understanding ethnic and racial representation?
By the end of this course, students will be able to engage in critical literary scholarship and engage both closely and comparatively with a range of cultural objects, and comprehensively articulate their analyses, observations, and new ideas about historical and ever-relevant questions. Students will develop a critical framework for analyzing and challenging Eurocentric and exoticizing representations of Asian, African, and Latin American regions. Drawing on key theoretical concepts such as bell hooks' "oppositional gaze" and Edward Said's "Orientalism", students will learn to interrogate how power, perspective, and cultural narratives shape non-Western understandings of the world.

Open to freshmen.

Evaluation Method

Class participation: 15%
In-Class Writing Assignments: 10%
Group Presentation: 5%
Discussion Posts: 10%
Paper 1 (Close Reading Assignment): 15%
Midterm Assignment: 20%
Final take-home: 25%

Class Notes

Northwestern University and its community of learners reside on the traditional homelands of the Council of Three Fires - the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi nations. Once used by Nomadic tribes who shared the Algonquin culture and language, by 1760 Potawatomi villages populated this land. This land was recorded as being transferred from the local Potawatomi community to the U.S. Government in the 1829 Treaty of Prairie Du Chien. The government sold the land to white settlers. After decades of violent encroachment by the French, British, and then U.S. American white settlers, and the defeat of a pan-Indian movement to keep white settlers out of the Great Lakes region, the Potawatomi community had no choice but to sell before they were forcefully removed west of the Mississippi River.

The acknowledgement of this land's history is one small effort toward finding greater accountability, deeper relationship, and mutuality with contemporary Indigenous communities.

Class Attributes

WCAS Writing Seminar

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: REASON: Pre-registration is not allowed for this class. Please try again during regular registration. Weinberg First Year Seminars are only available to first-year students.
Add Consent: Department Consent Required