Imagining the Other: Literature, Cinema and Colonization
Summary
The migrations and exilic movements of the 20th and 21st century and the construction of identity in a globalized world have given impetus to a literature that transcends physical and imaginary borders. Postcolonial and memory studies, among others, offer a broad theoretical apparatus for studying these ‘new’ creations of identity.
The course explores, from different theoretical angles, the imaginary of the other in narrative and film. Transnational and transcultural issues are addressed through a selection of texts that deal with themes such as violence, genocide and memory, as well as otherness, provenance, the perception of others towards oneself, and how this perception of the outside influences literary writing.
What Do We Study
We will read literary texts and watch films that deal with the following themes:
- Literary representations of the stranger, the refugee, the foreigner and origins
- Gender and society
- Identity and hybridity
- Issues of assimilation, integration, belonging and alienation
- Remembrance, memory, testimony and their literary transmission
Which is the Line of Thought
In the course we study different views of the dominant society towards ‘the other’, as well as the construction of (hybrid) identity on the basis of transcultural and transnational memory in literature and film.
Theoretical and Practical Approaches
Bill Ashcroft / Gareth Griffiths / Helen Tiffin, (eds.): The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Oxford: Routledge, 1995.
Aleida Assmann: Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Trad. Sarah Clift.
Aleida Assmann: Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. New York et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Homi Bhabha: The Location of Culture. Routledge, 2004.
Homi Bahbha: El lugar de la cultura. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Trad. De César Aira, 2002.
Mieke Bal / Jonathan Crewe / Leo Spitzer: Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1999.
María do Mar Castro Varela / Barış Ülker: Doing Tolerance and the Question of Urban Citizenship: An Introduction. Barbara Budrich, 2020.
Marianne Hirsch: La Generación de la posmemoria: escritura y cultura visual después del Holocausto. Madrid: Carpe Noctem, 2015.
Marianne Hirsch: The Generation of Postmemory. Durham: Duke University Press. Poetics today, 2008-03, Vol.29 (1), 103-128.
Marianne Hirsch / Leo Spizer: “Marked by Memory: Feminist Reflections on Trauma and Transmission.” Extremeties: Trauma, Testimony, and Community, ed. Nancy K., Miller and Jason Trougaw. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
Marianne Hirsch / Valerie Smith: “Feminism and Cultural Memory: An Introduction.” Signs, vol. 28, no. 1, 2002, 1–19.
[https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/mh2349/files/2019/07/Feminism-Cultural-Memory.pdf]
Susanne C. Knittel / Sofía Forchieri: Navigating Implication: An Interview with Michael Rothberg. Winchester University Press. Journal of perpetrator research, 2020-05, Vol.3 (1), 6-19.
Manuel Maldonado (ed.): Constelaciones híbridas. Transculturalidad y transnacionalismo en la narrativa actual en lengua alemana. Madrid: Síntesis, 2023.
Michael Rothberg: The implicated subject: beyond victims and perpetrators. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Michael Rothberg: Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Cultural Memory in the Present). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Edward W. Said: Orientalismo. Random House Mondadori, 2004. Trad. M. L. Fuentes.
Edward W. Said: Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1978.
Edward W. Said: “Orientalism Reconsidered”. Cultural Critique, No. 1. (Autumn, 1985), 89-107. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=08824371%28198523%290%3A1%3C89%3AOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6]
Gabriele Schwab: Haunting Legacies. Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Marisa Siguan: La memoria de la violencia. Barcelona: Icaria, 2022.
Roland Spiller / Kirsten Mahlke / Janett Reinstädler: Trauma y memoria cultural: Hispanoamérica y España. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020.