Literatures of Migration: Past and Present

The course focuses on a comparative literary analysis of the theme of migration from a diachronic perspective. The literary traditions covered in the course are those from English-, French- and Spanish-speaking countries. The concept of migration is to be understood in a broad sense, including not only the transnational migration of individuals, but also the migration of literary texts, worldviews and socio-cultural and literary concepts across geographical, linguistic and cultural borders. The course will emphasise how these cross-border migrations contribute to redefinitions of individual and collective identities, as well as of literary traditions. The comparative approach in the course aims to identify the similarities and differences that emerge in the redefinition of English-, French- and Spanish-speaking literary traditions when approached from the perspective of migration. The selected literary texts will be analysed with reference to a number of relevant theories, including postcolonialism, postnationalism, transculturality and cosmopolitanism.