“Narrative fiction provides a controlled wilderness, an opportunity to be and to become the Other,” writes Toni Morrison. The immersion in the Other’s inner self is one of the most valuable experiences we derive from reading fiction, but how, exactly, is this immersion effect created? What makes it possible for us to know fictional characters more intimately than we know our closest friends? Is it not slightly disturbing and even unethical to expose a subject, albeit fictional, as radically as the fiction writer exposes and studies the hero? This course surveys a variety of ways in which the private life and the consciousness of the Other can be represented through discursive practices of literature, film, and photography. Drawing its perspective from postcolonial studies, formal narratology, and poststructuralist criticism, this course examines how different methods of narrating the Other participate in constructing an ethics of power and resistance within a work of art. We read and view a diverse selection of works ranging from the classics of Russian and American fiction to postcolonial photography and documentary productions which experiment with perspective and power dynamic. No prerequisites
- Subject
- CLRS UN
- Credits (min)
- 3
- Credits (max)
- 3
- Credit unit
- points
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2026
- Source
- catalog.barnard.edu