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Module POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

Module code: EN247
Credits: 5
Semester: 2
Quota: 70
Department: ENGLISH
International: Yes
Overview Overview
 

“Colonialism” describes how Europeans annexed, planted and secured territories in other parts of the world, initially, for capital and commercial gain but, later, for the purpose of consolidating and expanding their power and spheres of influence. For the people of colonised territories, it involved not only the physical traumas of military violence and subjugation, dispossession and forced migration but also the loss of language and culture, subjection to falsified images and narratives, alienation from history and a loss of familiarity with “self”. In this module, we will consider the work of selected writers and film-makers who have recognised that challenging colonialism, and its contemporary neo-colonial and global reiterations, requires not only instigating and achieving politico-economic transitions – entailing, for instance, the signing of declarations, the raising and lowering of flags, and the establishment of new governments, states and systems of socioeconomic regulation – but also a rigorous and ongoing contestation of its language, narratives and aesthetic orders. These are artists, poised between worlds, who recollect, reaffirm and celebrate (sometimes ambivalently) the agency and cultures of their peoples but also ones who have used their hybrid, and often contradictory, positions to creatively engage pressing issues of migrancy, movement, (dis)location, transcultural communication and change in the contexts of globalization and global social justice movements. During the module, we will analyse the works closely, attending primarily to the thematics and material histories of “self”; issues of form and formal innovation; and questions about the social and political functions of literature and film, more generally. The writers and film-makers we will consider may include, for example, Tayeb Salih [Sudan], Chimamanda Adichie [Nigeria], Binyavanga Wainaina [Kenya] or Jonas Carpignano [Italy].

Open Teaching & Learning methods
 
Open Assessment
 
Open Autumn Supplementals/Resits
 
Open Timetable
 
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