HENKE2504U English - Free topic D: Literature as World Making Activity

Volume 2025/2026
Education

Engelsk

Content

In this course we will study Anglophone world literature as an example of a world-making activity. Taking a point of departure in theoretical reflections on the differences between world and globe, and between cosmopolitanism and globalisation, the course explores how literature can help us manoeuvre in complex, interdependent and turbulent times. We will discuss representations of friendship, (extended) family, cosmopolitan imaginaries, exilic belonging and ethical demands as concrete examples of world-making activities. Scholars such as Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida and Pheng Cheah will guide our reading of a selection of novels.

Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger (1987), Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992), Hisham Matar’s My Friends (2024), Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends (2022), Dina Nayeri’s Refuge (2017), and Dinaw Mengestu’s Someone Like Us (2024), Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006) and E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924).

Seminar discussions
This course only leads to exams Free Topic 1, Free Topic 2 and Free Topic 3.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 56
  • Preparation
  • 353,5
  • Total
  • 409,5
Individual
Collective
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Portfolio, A joint portfolio uploaded in digital exam: Deadline January 5th 2026
Type of assessment details
4 essays of 5-6 pages on set topics with feedback on the first 3 essays. Questions formulated by teachers will be released two weeks before respective submission deadlines.
1st essay week 4; 2nd essay week 8; 3rd essay week 12; 4th essay – final portfolio deadline. Each essay counts as 25% of the final grade.
Exam registration requirements

This course only leads to exams Free Topic 1, Free Topic 2 and Free Topic 3.

Aid
All aids allowed
Criteria for exam assesment