Many authors simultaneously express the values and expose the contradictions of their age. It is through narrative, through life histories, that cultural identities are formed. Explore the ways in which cultural identity is shaped by one or more of the texts on this course. The genre of autobiography may be of particular interest here. Remember that the texts themselves are to a certain degree documents of civilisation that this is not purely a question about thematics.
Travel narrows the mind .
Consider the implications of this proposition for one or more course texts. Frantz Fanon wrote The black man s soul is a white man s artefact . The history of language is often a story of possession and dispossession, territorial struggle and the establishment and imposition of a culture. Discuss the process of cultural self-fashioning, its possibilities and its problems. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism .