Strangers to Ourselves: Post-war & Contemporary Writing (Postgraduate)

The course will use the figure of the stranger to introduce students to a range of post-war writing from the 1950s to the present. The stranger here takes many forms: ambivalent tricksters, aspiring immigrants, invading armies, or an unhiemlich sense of ‘strangeness within’ as a constituent factor in the creation of identity. The course will include prose, poetry and drama that explore the social and political trends and upheavals of the period, from the Windrush Generation of the 1950s to the digital age. Thematically, our discussions will explore the boundaries of place, memory, literary form and identity (be it in terms of gender, sexuality, class, environmental relations, ethnicity or nationality).   Credit Level: 11 Year taken: Postgraduate