How do we define home? What does it mean to feel or make one’s self athome? How do homes produce people? Is a home a house, a place, or, to borrow a cliché, is home “where the heart is”?
In this course, students will examine different conceptions of home in a variety of works as they consider the social, political, emotional, and ideological implications of the categories of “house,“ “home,” and “belonging.” The course will consider constructions of home as an architectural, domestic, and often gendered space. It will explore whether our bodies are our first and last homes. It will question what it means to define home more broadly as, for example, a homeland or native tongue, and, in so doing, consider how modern migration and the processes of globalisation have changed our relationship to our homes. Finally, as students read about mobile or missing homes, they will rethink the binary that posits staying at home as the natural counterpart to journeying. Throughout the course our readings will invite students to reflect upon the links between home and belonging, and ask what it means to be at home in the world.
- Teacher: TST Faculty Alex Peat