Modern Prose: Travel and Narration
Gustav Klimt: On Lake Attersee (1900)
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 adventures do they feature in their texts? We will discuss the poetics of walking and contemporary slow travel, fictional East-West travelogues, Arctic adventures, Italian journeys, tales of displacement and post-migration stories. All texts in English translation. Format: Brief lectures and discussion. Requirements: Class work, reading quizzes, journals, midterm, projects.