Spanish 597RC - ST-Reading/Caribbean Literatur

A critical examination of the work of selected writers from the Hispanophone, Francophone, and English-speaking Caribbean seen in comparative perspective., this course explores the contemporary emergence of a distinctively pan-Caribbean outlook and literary esthetic as it is reflected in the writing emerging from the region. Against the backdrop of the archipelago's historical unfolding and richly varied ethnic, social, and cultural dynamics, emphasis is on the originality, defining particularities and varying accents of each writer's transformation of the composite material of Caribbean life, experience, and history into significant and powerfully compelling creative art. The extent to which an idiosyncratically and more amply encompassing Caribbean literature and consciousness (as reflected in these writers' narrative strategies, major motifs, signature sensibility, transnational dimensions and border-crossing depictions of evolving and conflicting notions of nation, citizenship, and identity) may be said to exist and discernibly to cohere beyond strictly insular or "orbital" linguistic boundaries is likewise among those central themes with which this course will engage .