ENGL 3891 - Hotel Orient

Prerequisite: An English course numbered between 2001 and 2907 and another English course numbered between 2200 and 2909.
FDR: Literature Distribution (HL)
Credits: 3

This seminar charts the historical encounters between East and West through the very spaces that facilitate cross-cultural transactions from the medieval to the postmodern. If modern hotel consciousness is marked by transience, ennui, eroticism, and isolation, we ask whether or not the same characteristics held true in premodern hotel practices, and if the space of the Orient makes a difference in hotel writing. Semantically, Orient means not only the geographic east. As a verb, to orient means to position and ascertain one’s bearings. In this sense, to write about lodging in the East is to sort out one’s cultural and geopolitical orientation.