Browse Hierarchy COM6223: Archipelago: Global Island Cultures

"There is no world, there are only islands" (Jacques Derrida). Islands are the centre of the world: from John Donne's (1624) "No man is an island" to Plato's Atlantis and Thomas More's Utopia, Shakespeare's Tempest¿or Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, fictional and real islands have shaped the history of world literature, philosophy and global cultures. This module challenges typical portrayals of islands as small and remote, turns to cultural and theoretical representations of global islands spaces, and invites students to 'think with islands' (including the small islands of the Caribbean and the Pacific, the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, or larger islands like the UK). Such archipelagic thinking opens up new geographies and genealogies of thought and provides a radical new look at global cultures.