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This banner was generated using the Nano Banana model. It contains significant geographic and historical inaccuracies—most notably in its distorted shorelines and the fictionalized placement of ancient landmarks. We include it here not as a precise reference, but as a site for interrogation: a reminder of how digital tools can mediate, and sometimes obscure, the intellectual geographies they attempt to represent.
This course navigates global storytelling by looking beyond traditional boundaries that often prioritize a single region over the vast complexity of the world. Instead of a narrow view of the literary canon, we will interrogate a more capacious map of global routes, tracking how stories travel and transform across different cultures and eras. By decentering a purely Eurocentric perspective, we can engage in a critical investigation of colonial forgetting—looking closely at the intellectual traditions that have been sidelined or erased by historical power structures.
We begin this journey in the foundational oral epics: the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, and the Epic of Sundiata. We will treat these not as dusty relics, but as living records of how people have navigated heroism, justice, and hospitality. As we move into the 20th and 21st centuries, we will examine how authors like Mário de Andrade, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Mohsin Hamid use the novel to negotiate the legacies of migration, identity, and technological change. Throughout the semester, we will use our web environment to build a living archive of these encounters, bridging the gap between historical texts and the algorithmic literacy required to navigate the digital world we live in today.
Please use the links below to navigate the course information. Weekly assignments and notes will be added as we go.
1. Course Texts and Reading Schedule
2. Instructor Policies & Course Philosophy
3. University Policies and Resources