Virtual Diaspora and Real Diaspora

This Course: PS934: Virtual Diaspora and Real Diaspora

The course will study, over the course of four weeks different paradigms of diaspora: one is real, where you really depart from your country either by force or voluntarily and settle in a different country. But as you leave and settle in a new country, you mourn the loss and create a mental paradigm where you can go back and forth down the memory lane to relieve your mind and make you happy. And this mental construct is called virtual diaspora. We will specifically study South Asian Diaspora through Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “ Kabuliwallah” and Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” or her memoir In Other Words. You will also read a few chapters from Diaspora and World Literature in that context from Damrosch’s What is World Literature and Ashmita Khasnabish’s Virtual Diaspora. You will have sufficient knowledge of various kinds of diaspora to understand its connection with Global Studies.

Assignments:

Two Responses and one Final Presentation.

The story of Rabindranath Tagore’s “ Kabuliwallah” and understand through David Damrosch’s reflection on World Literature and Khasnabish’s chapter on “Tagore in Virtual Diaspora. Two stories from Jhumpa Lahiri’s book Interpreter of Maladies: “Mrs. Sen” and “The Interpreter of Malady” to understand real Diaspora. Lahiri’s memoir In Other Words to understand “virtual diaspora” as she reminisces through her journey to Italy. Chapter from Virtual Diaspora on Jhumpa Lahiri.

The class is asynchronous online, but the final presentation will be on Zoom (date and time TBA).

For any questions about course content, please contact the course instructor, Dr. Ashmita Khasnabish -- akhasnabish@lasell.edu.

This section of PS934: Virtual Diasporal and Real Diaspora runs 9/16-10/22 in the Fall 2026 term. Students may enroll in the course up until 9/21. For any questions about enrollment or Lasell Professional Studies, please contact profstudies@lasell.edu.