Course cancelled.

Islands have been priviliged sites of the cultural imaginary ever since antiquity. They are typically represented as illustrative scenes of heightened significance. At the same time, they tend to be unstable, shifting spaces marked by the provisional, where personal, cultural and political configurations are questioned, contested and renegotiated.

In this course, we will examine a number of island narratives ranging from early modern island utopias such as Thomas More's Utopia and Sir Francis Bacon's Nova Atlantis to contemporary representations. Among other things, we will discuss islands as spaces for projective investments (The Tempest), sites of personal and cultural memory, evolutionary archives (Darwin, Welles) and as both physical and ideological battlefields. Thus, our final section will be dedicated to islands as scenes of crime and war in texts and films such as Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars and Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.

We will also read a number of theoretical and philosophical texts that will inform our readings of the primary texts.

Assessment: essay and class contribution.

Apply by email to Ian Gurney by Dec 9th.