HENB01106U English - Elective 2, topic 6: Global Encounters: Writing Cultural Difference, 1768-1856

Volume 2015/2016
Content

This course examines the representation of cultural encounter by travellers, explorers, soldiers and scientists during a period of unprecedented global expansion.  Starting with James Cook’s first voyage in 1768 and ending with Richard Francis Burton’s travels in Africa in the late 1850s, the course will consider cultural encounter in North and South America, the Near and Middle Easts, Asia, the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand – and even Scandinavia!  All the texts studied will be in English, although their authors will come from a range of social, national and ethnic backgrounds.  Combining cultural-historical and theoretical approaches to these texts, the course will introduce you to the pre-history of many contemporary debates about globalization, colonialism, and post-colonialism.  The course will also focus on the shifting representation of the traveller themselves to consider the role played by constructions of gender and social identity in constructions of alterity.

Primary texts will be provided via Absalon. In terms of secondary readings, selections form the following books will be used:

  • Ros Ballaster, Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England, 1662-1785 (Oxford University Press, 2005)
  • James Buzzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford University Press, 1993)
  • Cian Duffy, The landscapes of the sublime, 1700-1830 (Palgrave, 2013)
  • Peter Kitson, Forging Romantic China (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
  •  Nigel Leask, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840 (Oxford University Press, 2002).
  • Carl Thompson, The Suffering Traveller and the Romantic Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Class instruction
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 42
  • Preparation
  • 162,75
  • Total
  • 204,75
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Other
Criteria for exam assesment