Location, Re-location, and Dis-location in Global Literature

This Gateway workshop will discuss global literature through the lens of Location. Location is the place and the setting of a story or a group of people. Re-location discusses the voluntary movement of persons, goods, policies, as well as issues concerning those movements. Dis-location, on the other hand, is the forceful/involuntary movement of persons, goods, policies, as well as dis about the location, i.e., the rhetoric used to discuss it. Through various forms of literature across place and time, we will consider how writers contend with changing names, changing borders, changing governments, migration, belonging and unbelonging, colonial and imperial histories, exile, relationships one may have to known and unknown places, and more. We will also discuss ways of bringing formal and aesthetic questions to bear on discussions of social issues in the classroom. (Please note that this workshop will feature all new material and will not duplicate last year’s Global Literature workshop.)