ENGL 174 SC - Writing From the Middle of Nowhere

Nowhere is not a place. However, particular landscapes (the desert, the jungle, the forest), geographies (sub-Saharan Africa, Appalachia, the Pacific Islands), and locations (rural America, and much of the Global South) are often construed as empty or cultureless. In this course, we will study the factors that construct a social and cultural hierarchy of place, and how and why various global ?nowheres? occupy a subordinate position to Western urban centers. We will focus primarily on writing about and from the Anglophone/postcolonial world, and we will query how narrating colonized places as empty, backward, or undeveloped served as part of the political project of colonization itself. We will also consider how domestic spaces are a sort of ?nowhere??where labor is repeated, invisible, and disappearing?and will query how gender contributes to visibility of place. Students will study novels, poetry, and films alongside criticism that engages urban/rural studies and postcolonial theory.

Course Credit: 1.0

Please refer to the course schedule on the Scripps Portal for current course offerings and details.