This course will familiarize students with critical approaches that attend the study of “literary geographies” through an engagement with the so-called “transcultural turn” in contemporary American and Canadian literature. The words “mapping” and “geographies” that appear in the title of this course point towards a drive for definition and locatedness. The “transcultural turn,” on the other hand, heralds the advent of an era of increased mobility and interconnectedness brought about by globalizing trends. Renewed interest in the study of space in literary and cultural studies is opening up new ways of approaching the interactions between places, writers, texts and readers. For a growing number of people, contemporary experience entails navigating new local and transnational ties. We will examine the way contemporary N. American (US and Canadian) fiction re-conceptualizes our approach to identity construction through a transcultural perspective that questions the claims of culture, community, individuality, and belonging.

Το μάθημα επικεντρώνεται στην ανάλυση αγγλόφωνων θεατρικών κειμένων που γράφτηκαν γύρω στο γύρισμα της χιλιετίας και θα εξετάσει τις ψυχοκοινωνικές επιδράσεις της πολεμικής και κοινωνικής βίας καθώς και των κάθε μορφής διακρίσεων (φυλετικής, έμφυλης, θρησκευτικής, πολιτισμικής κ.α.) στην καθημερινή ζωή, χωρίς να παραβλέπει και ζητήματα φόρμας σε συνάρτηση με τη θεματική των κειμένων.

To μάθημα εισάγει τους φοιτητές σε βασικές αρχές πολιτισμικής και λογοτεχνικής θεωρίας. Συγχρόνως προσφέρει απαραίτητες γνώσεις όσον αφορά μεθόδους έρευνας και συγγραφής ερευνητικών εργασιών.

This course will explore contemporary British writing (late 1980s to the present) with a particular focus on the way the selected authors and thinkers have approached the slippery relationship between the individual and community. Drawing on approaches to individuality and social identity developed in the disciplines of political theory, cultural criticism and postcolonial theory, students will think critically about the relationship between the self and community. Revisions of belonging in the works of Jeanette Winterson, Monica Ali, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, among others, will be discussed against the backdrop of other transformations, such as new approaches to postmodernity, the impact of multiculturalism and religious discourses, shifting gender relationships and the speed of globalization.

This course will explore the impact of globalization on particular aspects of identity.  Main focus will be on interrogating the consequences wrought by the complex processes of accelerated globalization on certain geographical locations and spaces over the past quarter of a century.  To this end, this course will incorporate analyses of the social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics and implications rendered by globalizing trends and developments.  In assessing the transformative qualities of globalization on issues of identification, we will primarily, though not exclusively, focus on evaluating discourses that represent globalization as:  homogenization; hybridization; Americanization; Westernization;  neo-imperialism (empire); and as a catalyst for either establishing or re-affirming national and ethnic identification.  Finally, we will consider to what extent the practices of globalization might be leading individuals, groups, and communities to embrace new forms of identification that move beyond particularism and towards more universal ideological frameworks like cosmopolitanism?

This course will familiarize students with important concepts and trends in literary and cultural theory. It aims at offering the necessary tools in order to approach texts critically and engage in original thought. We will focus on several distinct though often related critical schools or movements, including Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Feminism, Queer Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, Post-humanist thought and Affect Theory as well as Ecocriticism and Animal Studies. A short selection of literary works drawn from contemporary English or American literature will be studied alongside the theoretical works, in order to elucidate theoretical approaches and focalize arguments. The course will also offer guidance and instruction in research methodology and critical writing; it will be streamlined to target the students’ needs in view of the dissertation they are required to submit as part of the MA

This course focuses on experimental North American writing practice in an attempt to open up literary writing to alternative as well as interdisciplinary ways of textual conceptualization, creation, design, and production. 

Το μάθημα είναι σεμιναριακού τύπου και μελετά έναν ή περισσότερους μείζονες συγγραφείς της Αγγλικής Λογοτεχνίας. Ανήκει στην κατεύθυνση "Αγγλικές και Αμερικανικές Σπουδές" του Μεταπτυχιακού Προγράμματος Σπουδών του Τμήματος Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας.