American Literary Expatriates in Europe

Glenda Carpio - Harvard University 

Class time:  M/W 1pm - 3:30pm

Classroom: 0G at Polo Didattico San Basilio

Course description

This course explores the fiction and travel literature produced by American writers living in Europe, from Henry James to the present.  In the course of this period the relationship between Old to New World continuously evolves.  While Europe becomes the battlefield for two bloody World Wars as well as the site of a museum past, the USA assumes a dominant role on the world stage. At the same time, America also betrays key fundamental ideals as it seeks to extend its sphere of influence.  American writers living and traveling in Europe reflect on these shifts and changes while also exploring the complex set of contradictions that expatriate life reveals.  For African American writers, for instance, Europe represents both a site of liberation from the oppression of American color codes and also an area of the world where they are often exoticized. We will focus on American literature set in Europe with readings that include but are not limited to essays, travelogues, poems, novellas, novels and short stories.

Formal requirements

none

Required readings

Henry James, Daisy Miller (1878)

The Aspern Papers (1888)

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

Henry Miller, The Tropic of Cancer (1934)

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (1956)

Eva Hoffman, Exit Into History: A Journey Through the New Easter Europe (1993)

Course Pack, includes:

Henry James, “Italian Hours,” from Collected Travel Writing: The Continent (1993)

Edith Wharton, Edith Wharton Abroad: Selected Travel Writings, 1888-1920 (1996)

T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” (1922)

William Carlos Williams, A Voyage to Pagany (1928), selections

Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever" (1934)

Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (1940), selections

Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos (1945), selections

F.O. Matthiessen, From the Heart of Europe (1948), selections

Richard Wright, Pagan Spain (1957), selections

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1958), selections

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955), Part III (“Encounter on the Seine: Blacks Meets Brown,” “A Question of Identity,” “Equal in Paris,”  “Stranger in the Village”)

Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain (1983), selections

Shay Younglood, Black Girl in Paris (2000), selections

Field Trips

 To be confirmed

Grading

• Class participation 25%
• Three papers, 6 - 8pp. each, the last of which may be creative in nature (a travelogue of your time in Venice) 45%
• Midterm 10%
• Final exam 20%.

Office location, contact information, tutorial time:

My office will be located at Ca' Bernardo; office hours will be communicated in class.  The tutorial for this course will be held on Mondays (starting from June 28) at 4pm in 0G at Polo Didattico San Basilio.