EN649: Sea Studies, Desert Studies: Literature of Voyaging
The expanses of sea and desert are extreme. Both are strategically important spaces that may at first sight appear empty to those unfamiliar with their intricate ecosystems. Both are hostile environments for humans to inhabit, requiring specific kinds of knowledge for survival. Both are crisscrossed by trade routes, rendering their negotiation strategically valuable. Aesthetically, both sea and desert provoke experiences of the sublime and have inspired rich traditions of writing, painting, music, cinema, and photography. Both are ‘horizontal’ rather than ‘vertical’ spaces, encouraging forms of sociality that might be understood as less hierarchical and more egalitarian than those bred by other localities.
Both sea and desert have inspired profound meditations on some of the most provocative questions of our time – of hospitality and strangeness, cosmopolitanism and non-belonging, migration, tourism, and travel. In addition, sea and desert serve as spaces for mapping subjectivities, emotions and sexualities across cultures. The module will explore these issues across a range of writing, making some connections to visual culture and music. We will also consider the concepts of the sea and the desert in relation to interdisciplinary contexts and postcolonial theory. Students will be encouraged to write at least one critical essay and develop one further piece of work that may take the form of a research project or creative compilation. The question of sea and desert travel as practices that invite mimetic repetition will also be threaded through the module, leading to some innovative opportunities for re-creating and re-enacting.
Reading:
Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands
T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Gertrude Bell, The Desert and the Sown
Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad : The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt
Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Bertolucci dir. The Sheltering Sky
Fernando Pessoa, Maritime Ode
Derek Walcott, The Schooner Flight
Ghassan Kanafani, All That’s Left To You
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Alex Garland, The Beach
Ibrahim Al-Koni, Gold Dust]