Lahore University of Management Sciences

ENGL 3113
Exile
Fall 2015

Instructor Maryam Wasif Khan

Room No. 136 Humanities and Social Sciences
Office Hours
Email Maryam.wasif@lums.edu.pk
Telephone 8055
Secretary/TA
TA Office Hours
Course URL (if
any)

Course Basics
Credit Hours 4
Lecture(s) Nbr of Lec(s) Per 2 Duration 110 Minutes
Week
Recitation/Lab (per week) Nbr of Lec(s) Per Duration
Week
Tutorial (per week) Nbr of Lec(s) Per Duration
Week

Course Distribution
Core No
Elective Yes
Open for Student Category All

COURSE DESCRIPTION
To those who no longer have a homeland, writing becomes home... Theodor Adorno.

Exile is never the state of being satisfied, placid, or secure... Exile is life led outside habitual order. Edward Said.

Despite the lines of various Muslim states having been drawn in the twentieth century, homelessness and
itinerancy seem to dominate contemporary narratives in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and even Turkish. In this course,
we will try and understand two things: first, why this narrative of exile continues to persist despite the rise of
various Muslim nationalisms and states? And second, what is unique about narratives of exile? How do these
literary narratives relate to a distant, or non-existent home? What about the protagonistshow is the refugee
different from the migrant worker who is different from the political exile? What is the place of Islam and an
Islamic past in these novels, films, and poems? Is there a particular aesthetic that emerges out of not having a
home?

Grading Breakup and Policy

Class participation 20%
Midterm paper (7-8 pages) 25%
Reflections on blog 20%
Final paper (10-12pages) 35%
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Sample texts

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India

Anita Desai, Baumgartners Bombay
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
Mazhar Zaidi, Zind Bhg(film)

Week Texts/Reading
1. Introduction/ Edward Said, Reflections on Exile
I. 2. Forster, A Passage to India

3. Passage to India
II. 4. Passage to India
Aamir Mufti, Inscriptions of Minority in Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish
Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2007).

5. Passage to India
III. 6. Rudyard Kipling, On the City Wall

7. Anita Desai, Baumgartners Bombay

IV. 8. Baumgartners Bombay

Da Silva, Tony Simoes. "Whose Bombay is it Anyway?: Anita Desai's"

Baumgartner's Bombay"." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature28.3
(1997).
9. Baumgartners Bombay
V. 10. Baumgartners Bombay

Bliss, Corinne Demas, and Anita Desai. "Against the Current: A Conversation
with Anita Desai." The Massachusetts Review (1988): 521-537.

VI. 11. Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

12. Season of Migration

Makdisi, Saree S. "The Empire Renarrated:" Season of Migration to the North"

and the Reinvention of the Present." Critical Inquiry (1992): 804-820.
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VII. 13. Season of Migration
14. Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun,

15. The Dupes (film)

VIII. 16. Edward Said, Arabic Prose Fiction after 1948

17. Intizar Hussain, Bast

IX. 18. Bast

X. 19. Bast
20. Bast

XI. 21. Asghar Farhadi, A Separation

22. A Separation
Cheshire, Godfrey. "Iran's Cinematic Spring." Dissent 59.2 (2012): 76-80.
23. Agha Shahid Ali A Country Without a Post Office
XII. 24. A Country Without a Post Office
Benvenuto, Christine. "Agha Shahid Ali." The Massachusetts Review (2002): 261-
273.
Ghosh, Amitav. "'The Ghat of the Only World': Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn."
Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy 5.3 (2002): 311-323.

25. Mazhar Zaidi, Zind Bhg

XIII.
26. Conclusion