Journeying , roaming, drifting… from medieval knights in search of
adventure to today’s tourists and refugees wandering across the globe...
Their narratives that interrogate characters who stand outside their
comfort zones hold a special place in our souls for any number of
reasons. Their reach for the Romantic Sublime is as appealing to us as
is their readiness to cling to or let go of their own cultural
attributes in encountering the Other. Travel narratives thereby lead us
to enhance our understanding of our own vulnerability and susceptibility
in alien territories, and our resilience in the unknown.
Through the study of contemporary literatures in Australia, this unit
will focus on the migrant, diasporic, refugee and global traveller whose
outer and inner wanderings investigate the rifts between peoples,
places, cultures, and ways of seeing, knowing and being in the world.
The emphasis will be on writing that confronts preoccupations with
contemporary debates regarding difference, marginality, liminality and
hybridity within transcultural and ‘transnation’ contexts.
- Trainer/in: Clara Hebel
- Trainer/in: Chandani Lokuge