ENGL 385-01, Postcolonial Studies, Spring 2008

Abstract

This class is designed to introduce undergraduate majors to postcolonial literature and theory. This highly charged, highly contested discourse has gained enormous attention—along with frequent controversy—within the past quarter century, and continues to rise in popularity amongst English students and scholars. One of the most vexing issues for this still-young field is the very term “postcolonial,” which has been defined in numerous ways, and co-opted by and for various communities. Our task will be to determine the reasoning behind these multiple “postcolonialisms,” to outline prominent areas of contemporary criticism, and to read seminal literature and nonfiction in the field. The course is organized around the idea that colonial enterprise and postcolonial experience are both governed, literally and metaphorically, by questions of ownership—ownership of land, capital, identity, agency, body, language, future. We will, therefore, consider questions such as “Whose text?” “Whose nation?” “Whose language?” as they apply to both colonial and postcolonial contexts. We’ll encounter texts from Africa, India, Ireland and the Caribbean, as well as the US and UK; Ania Loomba’s overview will provide general theory, along with contributions by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Benedict Anderson and others. We’ll pay particular attention to how questions of identity and agency emerge in postcolonial politics.