This course will examine the ways in which various actions around borders, such as the crossing, the erasure, and the rearrangement of boundaries, are fundamental to identity formation. It will reveal the complex ways in which writers and other artists, as well as activists of African descent in Europe conceive of identity and confront various sociopolitical, cultural and historical issues. The course will adopt a border poetics approach, which is designed to analyze representations of territorial and symbolic borders, as well as a decolonial perspective, and students will explore the ways in which monolithic notions of Europe are being challenged in popular contexts such as sports and music.
This course will examine the ways in which various actions around borders, such as the crossing, the erasure, and the rearrangement of boundaries, are fundamental to identity formation. It will reveal the complex ways in which writers and other artists, as well as activists of African descent in Europe conceive of identity and confront various sociopolitical, cultural and historical issues. The course will adopt a border poetics approach, which is designed to analyze representations of territorial and symbolic borders, as well as a decolonial perspective, and students will explore the ways in which monolithic notions of Europe are being challenged in popular contexts such as sports and music.