Utopia, paradise, shipwreck, abandonment, exile, death: From Shakespeare's The Tempest to Gilligan's Island, from Robinson Crusoe to Survivor, the Western fascination-even obsession-with the island as simultaneously a place of solace and a site of imprisonment stretches across the centuries. We can read these constructed sites as canvases of desire, places where the West can play out its dramas and test its confinements, but our understanding of the island can not be divorced from the historical and material contact that has allowed this imagination such freedom and popularity: histories of imperialism and unequal global power relations. In this class, we will read Western literary islands alongside islands constructed by Caribbean and non-Western writers in French and English. What happens when the island starts writing back? How do writers respond to reifications of their world? What does the island symbolize in their imaginations, both personal and national? Readings will include: Shakespeare's The Tempest and Aime Cesaire's A Tempest, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, J. M. Coetzee's Foe and Michel Tournier's Friday, Homer's The Odyssey and Derek Walcott's Omeros, and writings by Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Conde, Edouard Glissant and Daniel Maximin. Format: tutorial. Requirements: weekly tutorial papers and oral responses. Students with little or no French are invited to take the course as Comparative Literature 312; all readings, papers and discussions will be in English. Students taking the course as French 312 will conduct Francophone readings in French and write corresponding tutorial papers and discuss Francophone readings in French. Prerequisites: Comparative Literature 111 for Comparative Literature 312; French 109, 110, 111 or higher for French 312. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). Preference given to French and Comparative Literature Majors and those with compelling justification for admission. (Cultural Studies)