Modern German Prose: Travel and Narration
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 signaled a new era of openness and global mobility, both voluntary and forced. It spawned new forms of transcultural writing and reflection, which we will discuss in this course along with some earlier German travel writing. Questions include: How are modern travel and migration experiences narrated by a diverse group of writers? Whose voices do we hear in their stories? How are they portraying self and Other? Which encounters and experiences do they feature in their texts? We will discuss some fictional East-West travelogues, the poetics of walking and contemporary slow travel, Mediterranean journeys, tales of displacement and post-migration. Texts by Alina Bronsky, Abbas Khider, Saša Stanišić, Yoko Tawada, Adalbert Stifter, Elias Canetti, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Judith Hermann, Christoph Ransmayr and others.
All texts in English translation. Format: Brief lectures and discussion. Requirements: Class work, tests, reading journals, individual presentations and team projects.