English 241: Postcolonial Literature
MW 1: 10-2:30pm

Ambreen Hai

This introductory course focuses on Anglophone (i.e. written in English) fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama from Africa , the Caribbean and South Asia . This literature, if one may generalize over such vastness, does not only bear the literary and linguistic legacy of the British colonial experience, but also plays a crucial role in challenging or revising its historical and literary legacies. It also attempts actively to address contemporary dilemmas that ensue upon decolonization, and to (re)shape future individual and collective identities.

While being historically and geographically specific, we will explore many questions raised both in and by these texts. For instance, how is this English literature--what does it mean to write in the "oppressor's" language, and how are English language and literature transformed by these writers? How is this literature at once an artistic, cultural and political response to colonial domination and destruction? If nations are formed, as one critic has argued, as "imagined communities," then how can literature be an agent in creating national and cultural communities, and in transforming our imaginations and thus our realities? How can it revise history? What is "home," "family," "identity" or "race" for peoples who have often been multiply displaced for multiple reasons? How can intersecting constructions of race, gender, class or sexuality be (re)defined by literature? Is the predicament of being "hybrid"--a product of two or more cultures, histories, races or languages-- a matter of weakness or strength? How are women affected by--and affect--changes caused by modernization and often masculinist national movements? Why has " diaspora " (from dispersal) become a central preoccupation for postcolonial studies in recent years? What implications does all this have for contemporary U.S. imperialism? And what are the pitfalls of reading these literatures for each of us, located where we are? How are we to learn to read self-consciously and differently? And of course, any other questions that compel you as we read.

Readings : Achebe , Ngugi , Soyinka , Dangaremba , Naipaul , Walcott, Cliff, Rushdie, Kureishi , Arundhati Roy, and some theoretical and critical essays.

Requirements : three papers (5-7 pages) (or depending on class size, two papers and one final exam), six ungraded reading responses (1-2 pages) and active class participation. Classes will vary between lectures and discussion.