This course aims to expose students to those literatures which stand outside the British and American literary canon but which are connected by a shared historical experience of colonization. While readings contain selections from single countries or regions, the course offers scope for wide-ranging and comparative views in the literatures and cultures of the English speaking regions of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, and Ne Zealand. This course will also introduce students to the ongoing dialogues between postcolonial literatures and theory and attempt to re-examine the history and legacy of colonialism.
Students will be exposed to a selection of readings from postcolonial literature following the dissolution of colonial rule during the latter half of the twentieth century. These texts address issues of imperialism and the aftermath, such as nation building, race relations, diaspora, emigration, exile and the formation of new cultural identities.
In this course, we examine the condition of the postcolonial through its writings and effects. Divided broadly between the fields of postcolonial theory, and a range of writings that loosely identify with the condition of being postcolonial, we will attempt a reading of both the social conditions as well as the psychic imprint of what it means to be situated in a postcolonial world.
(a) Familiarity with postcolonial theory; (b) Exposure to social theory related to postcolonial studies; (c) A reading of postcolonial literatures