15-SEMLIC-12/22
This BA seminar is devoted to the concept of identity in American literature. In the country of polarizations and paradoxes that believes in democracy, multicultural perspectives, and equality of individual voices as it simultaneously cherishes common collective values, identity is a complex, albeit useful category of interpretation and analysis. Reading American novels, autobiographical texts, poetry and drama by writers from various cultural backgrounds, we will focus on the construction and representation of the self affected by the changing conditions of today’s world. While we discuss, among others, concepts such as narrative identity, individual and collective identities, patchwork identities, identity crises, broken identities, and identities on the mend, as well as fictions of identity (all) in the broad contexts of separation/exclusion and belonging/inclusion, our objective is to trace the multiple ways in which the self is – over and again – constructed and dismantled in the course of a lifetime.
- Teacher: Katarzyna Macedulska