FYS 3 National Odysseys: Travel as Transformation in American Narrative
This course deals with the significance of travel as a persistent motif in United States literature and popular film. It is not a survey of “travel literature” in any promotional or touristic sense. Instead, we will consider what sorts of individual or social circumstances compel people to move through the landscapes of the nation. What are they fleeing from or searching for? How are they transformed, for better or worse, in their journeys?
To answer these questions, we will reflect on themes of exploration and escape, discovery and displacement. The course texts will relate such experiences as the traumatic dislocations of slave transit, the ecstatic wanderings of beat writers, the forced exodus of Dust Bowl refugees, the quest for personal redemption or renewal, and the inexorable circuity of migrant labor.
This is a humanities course in content, topic and method. You will be asked to read books and watch films with care and critical focus. Your understanding of these texts will be exercised in regular seminar discussion and in a series of informal and formal interpretive essays. Some evening film screenings may be required.
Prerequisite
Open only to first year frosh