Degree | Type | Year | Semester |
---|---|---|---|
4313157 Advanced English Studies | OT | 0 | 1 |
There are no prior course requirements but it is advisable for students who wish to take this course to have some basic knowledge of postcolonial theory.
Objectives and Contextualisation
The aims of the course are to provide students with the necessary skills
The following texts will be discussed in detail from various perspectives including gender, ethnicity, class, ageing and the environment. Other disciplines such as history, politics, anthropology and diaspora studies will also be drawn on.
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Gravel Heart, Bloomsbury, 2017 - Zanzibar-UK
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland, Bloomsbury, 2013 - India-USA
Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon, Hodder, 2014 - Nigeria
Mike van Graan, Green Man Flashing, Junkets Publisher, [2006] 2010 - South Africa
The short stories, poems, van Graan's play and some critical articles that will be discussed will be posted on moodle
Close readings of the novels, play, poems, short stories and class discussions centred on particular theoretical issues or cultural aspects.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
---|---|---|---|
Type: Directed | |||
Theory classes | 50 | 2 | 2, 1, 3, 9, 6, 8 |
Type: Supervised | |||
Paper | 15 | 0.6 | 2, 1, 4, 6, 10 |
Type: Autonomous | |||
Private study | 40 | 1.6 | 3, 5, 6, 8 |
Students are required to participate in class discussions on a regular basis. Students will be asked to keep a "Reflective Journal" throughout the course which will
have to be submitted to the teacher halfway through the semester (9th November) and at the end alongside the Final Paper (deadline 9th Janaury 2023). The "Reflective Journal" grants students a space whereby they can reflect upon issues raised by the texts under discussion in a subjective manner.
The final paper consists of a 2,500 word paper (approximately 10 pages) with at least 5 valid, academic secondary sources. Students are required to submit a proposal first.
This proposal must include the following: provisional title, 150-word abstract, bibliography with five items). The proposal should be submitted by 30th November. Students are encouraged to write their final paper on their class presentation.
In order to pass the subject, students must hand in all the written exercises (including the Reflective Journal), do the classroom presentation and participate in class discussions.
The assessment is based on the following:
On carrying out each assessment activity, lecturers will inform students (on Moodle) of the procedures to be followed for reviewing all grades awarded, and the date on which such a review will take place.
Students will obtain a Not assessed/Not submitted course grade unless they have submitted more than 25% of the assessment items.
Re-assessment for this subject will be undertaken on an item-by-item basis, for which the following conditions are applicable:
VERY IMPORTANT
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject.
Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Class discussions and presentation of a topic | 20% | 20 | 0.8 | 3, 4, 9, 7 |
Final paper | 40% | 15 | 0.6 | 2, 1, 3, 9, 5, 6, 10 |
Reflective Journal | 20% | 5 | 0.2 | 9, 5, 8 |
Short essay | 20% | 5 | 0.2 | 1, 3, 6, 8 |
Printed Sources
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies.
London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
Bhabha, Homi K.. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial & Postcolonial Literature. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Chapman, Michael & Margaret Lenta (eds). SA Lit. Beyond 2000. Durban: University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011.
DeLoughrey, Elizabeth & George B. Handley. Postcolonial Ecologies.Literatures of the
Environment. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Dyer, Richard, White. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks. 1952. Trans. Contance Farrington. New York:
Grove Press 1998.
Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth. 1961. Trans. Charles Larn Markmann.
London: Penguin Books, 1990.
Gilroy, Paul. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture, London: Routledge, 2004.
Hand, Felicity, “Becoming Foreign: Tropes of Migrant Identity in Three Novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah”, Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing, Ed. Jonathan P. Sell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp 39-58.
Hand, Felicity, “Searching For New Scripts: Gender Roles in Memory of Departure”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol 56, Nº 2, 2015, pp 223-240. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2014.884991
Huggan, Graham & Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Ecocriticism. Literature, Animals,
Environment, London: Routledge, 2010.
Jue, Melody, "Intimate Objectivity: On Nnedi Okorafor's Oceanic Afrofuturism", Women's Studies Quarterly , Spring/Summer 2017, Vol. 45, No. 1/2, pp. 171-188. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44474120
Malak, Amin. Muslim Narratives and the Discourse of English. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 2005.
Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley and London: University of California
Press, 2001.
Mishra, Vijay, The Literature of the Indian Diaspora. Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary,
Routledge, 2007.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. Third World Women
and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Nadiminti, Kalyan, "'A Betrayal of Everything': The Law of the Family in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland", Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 21, Number 2, June 2018, pp.
239-262, https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2018.0014
Nash, Geoffrey. Writing Muslim Identity. London: Continuum, 2012.
Ngugi, Mukoma wa, The Rise of the African Novel. Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership, UP Michigan, 2018.
Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence. The Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013.
Oliva, Juan Ignacio & Esther Pujolràs-Noguer (eds), Revista canaria de estudios ingleses. Special Issue on Indian Ocean Imaginaries, Vol. 82, 2021. https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/22454
Ramsey-Kurz, Helga & Geeta Ganapathy-Doré (eds). Projections of Paradise. Ideal
Elsewheres in Postcolonial Migrant Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011.
Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. Granta,
1991.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978. Penguin Books, 1998 [1978].
Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Said, Edward, Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Culturals Essays. New Dehli:
Penguin Books, 2001.
Schwarz, Bill. The White Man's World, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011.
Spivak, Gayatri. The Post-Colonial Critic, ed. Sarah Harasym. London: Routledge, 1990.
Thiongo, Ngugi wa', Decolonizing the Mind. The Politics of Language in African
Literature. London: Heinemann, 1986.
Williams, Patrick & Laura Chrisman (eds). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory,
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Womack, Ytasha L. Afrofuturism. The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, Lawrence Hill Books, 2013.
Young, Robert. Colonial Desire. Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, Routledge, 1995.
Websites
Jhumpa Lahiri https://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/jhumpalahiri/
Nnedi Okorafor https://nnedi.com/
Ratnakara. Indian Ocean Literatures and Cultures https://ratnakara.org/
South African History Online https://www.sahistory.org.za/
Mike van Graan https://mikevangraan.co.za/
No specific programme will be used in this subject