Roots and Routes: Writing Identity, Migration, and Culture

This is an Enduring Question course and is open to FRESHMEN only. You must take both ENGL1712 and ENGL1713. How does migration in today's world shape questions of identity, borders, and belonging and lead to a reimagining of home? In these paired courses, students will read a range of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by authors whose migration stories offer different ways to think about what it means to be an outsider and build a new life and home. They will explore how their own roots and routes shape their identities. We will consider the gifts and challenges of making a home across cultures and discuss themes of power, voice, silence, memory and multilingualism, along with the experience of migrating in a globalized, wired, yet often divided world. Activities may include an author talk, a museum visit, an excursion to an immigrant neighborhood, creative writing, and several shared meals.