IDLS-3070 : Imagining Well-Being in a Catastrophe Era

How has well-being been represented (in popular and academic discourses) as a thing to be attained in the 21st century? This course will offer a more complex perspective on the lived experience of well-being particularly in an era in which humans face potential catastrophe from myriad sources: environmental, political, social, economic, etc. We will read literary narratives of homelessness (exile, dislocation, refugee-ism, a sense of being estranged or a stranger, etc.) that, simultaneously, locate a sense of connectedness, community, and hope in the midst of such upheaval.