| CODE | MDT3002 | ||||||
| TITLE | Middle Eastern Travels | ||||||
| UM LEVEL | 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 6 | ||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Mediterranean Institute | ||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit offers an exciting critical vista of modern and contemporary itinerant and visitor narratives of the Middle Eastern region, with a focus on the relation between and impact of travel writing on autobiography, as well as the dialectic of the region’s fraught geopolitical realities and their subjective experience by contemporary writers, touring visitors, memoirists and reporters. Which aspects of cultural and political life in the Middle East motivate and fascinate the writer-visitor's lens to home in and seek to depict the region for the consumption of largely Western audiences? How does the actual travel itinerary impact or re-dimensionalise the politics of the itinerant text itself? To what extent do writers visiting the Middle East seek compromise between informed and critical representation of the lives and events, and the expectations of their audiences for aesthetic pleasure and the “good read”? Which are the central issues to be addressed in the way this writing marks out a relationship of affluence with the representation of uneven development, and the roots of this question in the colonial encounter? How is the relation between reportage, life writing and ethnographic immersion negotiated and portrayed in these texts? This study-unit will visit a range of seminal texts that have kindled the travel imaginary across the Middle East, from Turkey to Syria and Kurdistan, the Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Iran, Egypt and the Gulf region. Students will have theo opportunity to read and debate texts by Orhan Pamuk, Raja Shehadeh, Thomas Friedman, William Dalrymple, Mourid Barghouti, Ryszard Kapucinski, Wilfred Thesiger, Michael Wood, Amin Maalouf and others with a view to grasping the fascinating relation between life writing and Middle Eastern travel, between politics and aesthetics, local culture and historical memory in the representation of this politically and socio-economically complex part of the world. Study-unit Aims: This study-unit aims to acquaint students, in a critical manner, to the contemporary political-cultural issues and challenges of the Middle Eastern region through a vigilant reading of autobiographic travel texts from or about this politically and culturally complex region. The study-unit seeks to provide a strong critical basis for understanding the Middle East through both local and external purviews such that students acquire fresh critical perspectives both of the region and of the agendas inherent in the modes of its international representation. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - demonstrate a sound, politically and culturally attuned grasp of contempoarary travel representations of the Middle Eastern region; - define the salient representational concerns, issues, motivations and agendas involved in the cultural, aesthetic and political representation of the Middle East for international readerships; - display a critical awareness of the impact of the journey on the representation of nation, community and individual as filtered through autobiographical practice. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - discuss the question of cultural and political representation in and of the Middle East and the impact/s of itinerant representation on the international understanding of the region; - assess the political issues and stakes involved as the influence of travel writing in and about the Middle East increasingly grows into a publishing industry catering for the expectations of non-regional audiences and readerships; - formulate informed opinions on the impact and nature of public engagement with the Middle Eastern region as a result and consequence of high-exposure representations such as the ones addressed by the study-unit, and beyond; - associate, relate and contextualise the writings covered in the unit within the broader context of European-American perceptions and desires of and from the region, and the extent of neo-colonial implications therein. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Orhan Pamuk, 'Istanbul — Memories of a City' - Raja Shehadeh, 'Palestinian Walks' - Thomas L. Friedman, 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' - William Dalrymple, 'From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East' - Mourid Barghouti, 'I Saw Ramallah' - Michael Wood, 'In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia' Supplementary Texts - Ryszard Kapucinski, 'Travels with Herodotus' - Jason Elliot, 'Mirrors of the Unseen — Journeys in Iran' - Wilfred Thesiger, 'Arabian Sands' - Christiane Bird, 'A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan' - Thomas L. Friedman, 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' - Freya Stark, 'A Winter in Arabia' - Jason Goodwin, 'On Foot to the Golden Horn' - Marie Louise Pratt, 'Imperial Eyes — Travel Writing and Transculturation' - Casey Blanton, 'Travel Writing: The Self and the World' - Carl Thompson, 'Travel Writing' - Peter Hulme, Tim Youngs eds., 'The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing' edited by Peter Hulme, Tim Youngs |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Seminar | ||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Norbert Bugeja |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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