Course details

Name: ENGL - 502

Title: SEMINAR IN BRITISH LITERATURE SPIES OF EMPIRE EMPIRE OF SPIES

Section: 01

Semester: Fall - 2023

Credits: 3

Description:
This course will be run as a seminar, focusing on the writings and lives of four major “spies of Empire”: Lawrence, Bell and Stark (roughly contemporaneous with each other)-representing/working for British imperial interests in what is today termed the Middle East, as well as in parts of South Asia, with Eberhardt supplying intel about Algeria to the French colonizers through her writings. The course will consider the questions: is all writing about the “other; a tool of classification and control in service to colonial and imperial designs? Were all four of these “spies’ pawns, or agents in the Great Game of British (and French) colonial rule in the last century? Were they orientalists, instrumentalizing knowledge-production to serve ends of Empire, or were they lovers of the Other, seeking different philosophical truths than those their birth cultures taught them? Can travel writing be an end in itself or is it/must it always be, in service to larger political ends and ideologies?
Students will be divided into pairs/groups assigned to each of the travel writers/adventurers in the course, and will be responsible for generating materials and discussions on each of these, including presentation of biographies, critical assessments of their work, historical and geographical contextual information, films and other creative works generated about them, and so on, whilst defining the criteria for these choices, and how research materials are being assessed. Each pair/group will be responsible also to serve as peer evaluators, generating questions for discussion and clarification for 1 other group’s assignment. Individual assessment in the course will be based on a final term paper generated by the ongoing work undertaken throughout the term= 50% of the overall grade, while 50% will be based on the semester-long group class work described above.

Sample texts (excerpts):
Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire (1979)
TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926)
Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia (2013)
Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Shahid Nadeem, Lawrence in Lahore: the Lost Years, a play in 3 acts (2023; unpublished draft)
Freya Stark, Beyond Euphrates (1951)
--------------, Valley of the Assassins (1934)
--------------, Perseus in the Wind (1948)
Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Passionate Nomad: the Life of Freya Stark (1999)
Janet Wallach, Desert Queen: the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell: adventurer, adviser to kings, ally of Lawrence of Arabia (1996)
Rosemarie O’Brien, ed. Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries 1913-1914 (2000)
Isabelle Eberhardt, Vagabond. Trans. Annette Kobak (1988)
…………………The Oblivion Seekers. Trans. Paul Bowles (1972)
…………………..The Passionate Nomad: the Diary of Isabelle Eberhardt. Trans. Nina de Voogd, 1987.
Annette Kobak, The Life of Isabelle Eberhardt (1988)

Last updated on 2023-03-26 By Afzal-Khan Fawzia (khanf)

Schedule: Tuesday From 5:30 pm To 8:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

  • Any Literature (1e)
  • Post-1900 (1d)
  • Women and Gender Studies (3c)
  • Class Issues (3d)
  • Graduate (BA/MA)

Teaching Faculty: Afzal-Khan Fawzia (khanf)

Is course canceled: No