MENG 6510, Transnational Whisperings —
Selected Writings of Michael Ondaatje
Spring 2015, EH 204
Mondays 5:30-8:20pm
mwutz@weber.edu
NULC Special Course Offering, Second Block, 15 March to 27 April
Course Description
This 2-credit seminar is intended to introduce you to the “eminent writer” who will be the featured speaker on the 30th anniversary of Weber State University’s National Undergraduate Literature Conference: Michael Ondaatje. Known mainly for his Booker-prize winning novel,
The English Patient (which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film by Anthony Minghella), Ondaatje has had a distinguished career as one of the most recognized and recognizable men of the letters in the global diaspora.
Among the goals of this course are:
- Preparing you for Ondaatje’s visit to WSU (and perhaps interact with him ☺)
- Studying the work of one of the most widely known transnational/postcolonial writers
- Interrogating the fluidity of generic categories, as well as the permeability of the boundaries between national, transnational, and postcolonial literatures
- What is the relationship between the written presentation of history and, well, fiction?
- How do contemporary writers relate to literary tradition?
- Looking at the effects of writing in English—“the language of the colonizer”—while giving voice to the (post)colonial, and often silenced, “other.”