Homecomings: The (Im)possibility of Return

Catalog description

Can one truly return home? In this seminar, we will reflect on constructions of the patria and the home; on migrations, exile, and trauma; possible and impossible returns; personal returns and returns in the place of others; memory, nostalgia, recognition, alienation, and the uncanny. Beginning with the disillusionment of the classic homecoming of Odysseus, we then read the divergent perspectives on the return home of Hölderlin, Nabokov, and Camus, among others. We explore homecomings through the lens of gender, colonialism, immigration, and dictatorship in Latin America, a region whose history is marked by arrival, departure and forced separation. We conclude the course with the diasporic travel between the United States and the Caribbean.