Literature and Transatlanticism Reading Group
Academic Year 2008-2009
University of Edinburgh, Autumn 2008
Various locations
The following shows the calendar of meetings of the reading group, including the list of works that were discussed in those meetings. For the benefit of the participants but also the STAR members, the majority of these texts, with the exception of the longer ones, were scanned and uploaded on the STAR website. They can be accessed in the Archive section, and are protected by a password.
Many thanks to Jacob Patterson-Stein, graduate student at the MSc and coordinator of the Reading Group for this academic year, who has helped put together the following information.
22 October 2008
Alice Munro's short story 'The View from Castle Rock', in the New Yorker website, or directly accessed here: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/08/29/050829fi_fiction.
28 October 2008
From Derek Walcott, Selected Poetry, ed. Wayne Brown (Oxford: Heinemann, 1993):
From *In a Green Night* (1962):
'To a Painter in England', pp. 2-3;
'Ruins of a Great House', pp. 4-5
From *The Castaway* (1965): 'The Almond Trees', pp. 21-23
From *The Gulf* (1969):
Landfall, Grenada, p. 32;
Homecoming: Anse La Raye, pp. 33-34
From *Sea Grapes* (1976): 'The Virgins', p. 70
From *The Star-Apple Kingdom* (1980): 'Forest of Europe', pp. 87-90
4 November 2008
Two short stories by Sherman Alexie - 'A Drug Called Tradition', and 'The Trial of Thomas Builds -the - Fire' - from the collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Part of next week's discussion will be about whether the stories are 'transatlantic', what makes a text 'transatlantic', and issues of comparative literature. Mr. Alexie, in a 2002 PBS interview, responded to a question about 'crossing the borders of literary criticism' with the following: 'Incorporate the native texts with non-native texts. Read "Ceremony" alongside "Emma". Read "House Made of Dawn" alongside "Moby Dick". Read Simon Ortiz and Emily Dickinson together.'
11 November 2008
Jamaica Kincaid, 'A Small Place' and a viewing of the film 'Life and Debt', which is based on
Kincaid's work.
Also, three stories by James Thurber: 'A Ride with Olympy' and 'My Memories of D.H. Lawrence' from Volume 1 of Vintage Thurber and 'The Secret Life of James Thurber' from Volume 2 of Vintage Thurber; see James Thurber, Vintage Thurber, 2 Vols. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1983).
Also to be discussed a collection of poems by Nicholas Guillen; see Nicolas Guillen, Yoruba from Cuba, tr. Salvador Ortiz-Carboneres (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2005).
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