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Brief Course Overview
An emerging field in world
literature—
Classical texts of
First-World
colonialism
are read in dialogue with
Postcolonial texts from
the Developing World
+ selected poems, articles, handouts
and selections from
The
Post-Colonial Studies Reader
—see schedule below
(Colonial
World Maps)
Terms and Objectives
(terms
index)
Most US readers are schooled in reading
national
literatures (American literature, English literature) or occasionally World
Literature as "Great Books" of
Western Civilization (with occasional visits to non-Western sources like
Confucius, Gilgamesh, etc.).
Therefore international
terms
for World Literature like
colonialism and
postcolonialism may be
unfamiliar.
-
Unfamiliarity rises partly from postcolonial
studies' rise in British Commonwealth or French and other former European colonies.
-
Americans may resist thinking in
postcolonial terms because many resist regarding the United
States as an empire or an imperial nation, preferring instead to emphasize the
USA's origins as thirteen colonies throwing off the British Empire.
-
Post-structuralism
emerged simultaneously with postcolonialism, contributing to shifting terms or
unfamiliar interpretive strategies.
-
In contrast to the plain style of Anglo-American
scholarship and fiction, postcolonial criticism and fiction may perform extravagantly or confrontationally, sometimes
flouting but other times imitating the neutral style affected by imperial
cultures.
(Course objectives 1-3 =
primary objectives for seminar discussions and exams)
1. To bring
classic literature of
European colonialism and
emerging literature from the postcolonial world
into dialogue—either conscious debates
between authors or exchanges arranged by later readers, or dialogues between
colonizing and colonized characters in a single text.
1a.
To mediate the “culture wars” between
the “old canon” of
Western classics and the
“new canon” of multicultural literature by studying
them together rather than separately.
1b.
To extend the colonial-postcolonial transition to a
contemporary third wave of
transnational migration.
Alternative terms: post-national, post-race, post-modern.
2. To theorize
the
novel as the
defining
genre of
modernity, both for colonial and postcolonial cultures.
2a.
By definition, the genre of the novel combines fundamental representational
modes of narrative and
dialogue.
-
dialogue as formal but humanizing encounter of
self &
other
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narrative as personal and cultural
trajectory, direction, or history
-
Can Colonizers be understood as other than
villains? Must the Colonized be cast as
victims? Does dehumanizing the other automatically dehumanize the
self, or may it be liberating?
(Moral opposition increases drama, but moral relativism cultivates
relations.)
-
Can literary fiction instruct students’
knowledge of world history and international relations? Compared to nonfictional
discourses of history,
political science, anthropology, economics, etc., how may colonial & postcolonial fiction
help more people learn world history, contemporary events, and the global future?
2b. To extend genre studies to poetry and film
(esp. Derek Walcott of St. Lucia, West
Indies [b. 1930; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1992]).
3. To account for
Americans’ difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse.
3a.
Is America (USA) an imperial, colonial, or neo-imperial nation? Or an “empire in
denial?”
-
Compare and contrast "settler" and "non-settler"
colonization
-
settler colonies: USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa,
Israel
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non-settler colonies: India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria,
Hong Kong, Philippines
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in-betweens: Latin American countries like Mexico
-
USA as last “superpower”: resemblances to and differences
from previous empires like Rome and England.
-
Issues of American ignorance of larger world and
alternative worldviews
3b. Does American resistance to or ignorance of postcolonial criticism react to this
discourse’s development from outposts of the former British Empire and French /
Francophone traditions?
3c.
How may colonial-postcolonial discourse fit into American nationalist and
multicultural curricula? If this is your only colonial-postcolonial course, how
may it serve your scholarly or teaching interests?
(Secondary Objectives)
4. To
observe representations or repressions of gender in male-dominant fields of cross-cultural contact.
5.
Periods & movements:
tradition and modernity;
colonialism, postcolonialism,
and postmodernism. (The latter
two co-emerge in
later twentieth century with some shared styles.)
6. To
develop environmental thinking: demographics, population
dynamics (esp.
Demographic Transition), immigration, climate change, and other global environmental issues
often occur in terms of developed and undeveloped nations, or
modernization.
+ issues
of "space & place": Compared to
traditional cultures of the “Third World,”
modern cultures of “global culture” or the “First World” usually have little
attachment to particular places. Sense of “place” or “rootedness” gives way to
abstract space: modern airports, hotels, or malls.
7. To
register the persistence of
millennial or apocalyptic
narratives,
symbols, and themes as a means of describing
the colonial-postcolonial encounter.
7a. Two prevailing narratives of
modernization:
Oedipal conflict and
millennialism
(as reaction to creative destruction)
8. Morality or ethical issues: How reconcile that people like ourselves
advancing
Western Civilization have acted (or written) inhumanely toward others?
Reading & Presentation Schedule,
fall 2013
[fall 2015 schedule will be updated before classes
begin, but mostly same]
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) |
Discussion Questions:
1. What knowledge of World Literature? Empires?
2. Are terms of "colonial & postcolonial literature"
familiar? How? Where? What texts? 3. If this field of
study remains recent and little-known in the USA, what motivations are
there to learn it? What resistance?
4. Our colonial
literature (like Kipling's poem or Robinson Crusoe) is mostly written by classic
writers who are invaluable to European-American literary traditions. How (or should) we avoid setting up them or their attitudes as
villains in a grand moral drama? That will be our natural response, but
how or why should we question it? What other options?
5. What pre-knowledge of
Robinson Crusoe? What surprises in store? (Novel)
"Shooting an Elephant"? |
Derek Walcott (b. 1930) |
Monday,
2 September:
No class meeting: Labor Day holiday
Monday, 9 September
Reading Assignment:
Robinson Crusoe
chapters 1-4 (up to "The Journal")
(Index
to Crusoe readings—read another edition if preferred.)
George Orwell, "Shooting
an Elephant" (1936)
Crusoe Images
Student presentations
Poetry
reading:
Claude McKay, "Enslaved"
+ Derek Walcott, “Crusoe’s Island”
Poetry reader:
Jacob McCleese
Web
Review:
Emory University:
Introduction to Postcolonial Studies
Web presenter:
Lori Arnold
optional readings:
selections from Ian
Watt, “’Robinson Crusoe,’ Individualism, and the Novel”
Tzvetan
Todorov, The Conquest of America:
The Question of the Other
(1982, 1984) |
Agenda: obj. 1
Assignments incl.
White Teeth, midterm
web: Lori
presentation assignments
discussion lead:
[break] discussion Crusoe
(instructor) What surprising?
Bakhtin,
Watt;
novel
realism 3.40, 3.50 poems:
Jacob |
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Discussion questions:
1. Why do we already know the story of
Crusoe whether we read the novel or not? What surprises upon reading?
(2.7, 3.24, 3.28) If this is your first reading, what was surprising?
2. What attitudes does Crusoe show toward home,
family, career? What
generational issues? How are these
modern or traditional?
> objective
8a. Two
prevailing narratives of
modernization:
Oedipal
conflict and
millennialism.
3. How does Crusoe's individual life correspond
to England's history as an imperial-colonial nation?
4. If Crusoe is "the first English
novel," how does it
exemplify the
genre or leave your expectations frustrated?
How is the novel both
romantic
and
realistic?
5. Dialogue / intertext Crusoe
with Orwell's "Elephant": how are both colonial writings, but how does
Orwell's text appear more modern, almost postcolonial?
|
George Orwell (1903-1950) |
Crusoe helping Friday |
Discussion Questions:
Obj. 2. To theorize
the
novel as the
defining
genre of
modernity, both for colonial and postcolonial cultures.
(dialogue ch. 15)
1. Crusoe: In what ways do
Crusoe and Friday exemplify
"self and other"
in the Colonial-Postcolonial dialogue?
How may an
equalizing, humanizing dialogue begin? How does the speech or power of the
colonized (Friday) threaten to escape the power of the colonizer
(Crusoe)? Extend to A Small Place.
2. What is Friday's ethnicity in
Robinson Crusoe and in popular culture? (ch. 14) Not to defend
cannibalism, but what does
it signify to Crusoe so that he obsesses over it? (ch. 12) What
"primitive" buttons does cannibalism push?
3. Look for
millennialism in both
texts? Discuss also Crusoe's conversion—what validity and what
misgivings? Compare to attitudes toward father. Review discussion of
Puritanism & secular individualism and capitalism in
selections from Ian
Watt, “’Robinson Crusoe,’ Individualism, and the Novel.” See also
Adam Smith,
selections from The Wealth of Nations (1776) ("Providence"
as "invisible hand")
4. How does reading
Kincaid's A Small Place
intertextually with
Robinson Crusoe
change your reading of either or both?
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Lincoln and slave
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Monday, 23 September
Reading Assignment: Jamaica Kincaid,
Lucy
(1-132; up to chapter titled "Lucy")
Student presentations
Discussion leader:
Marichia Wyatt
(Dialogue between Crusoe and
Lucy? How has the novel changed? or
other issues)
Instructor previews:
Paul Gauguin,
artist referred to in
Lucy, p. 95 + question
Poetry
reading:
William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (+
Lucy,
pp. 17-19, 29-30): How does the poem change if read in dialogue w/
Lucy?
Poetry reader: Lori Arnold
notes from Paul Gilroy,
The
Black
Atlantic: Modernity and the Double
Consciousness. |
Agenda:
Assignments, midterm updates
discussion: Marichia
Kincaid's style; millennialism 8, 72; Crusoe ch. 6
[break]
Model Assignments / midterm poetry:
Lori Kincaid's Annie John &
"Columbus in
Chains"
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Discussion Questions:
Obj. 2. To theorize
the
novel as the
defining
genre of
modernity, both for colonial and postcolonial cultures.
1. Where does this text fit in
Colonialism > Postcolonialism >
Transnational
Migration? If
Lucy is an immigrant story,
what does she see about the 1st
world? 60-1
2. What role or identity for 1st world after
colonialism? How is Mariah represented in these terms? How may Lewis be
neo-colonial?
73
3. Criticize
Jamaica Kincaid:
identify nature of
style; what attractions, downsides?
4. Crusoe says his "original sin"
was not being satisfied with his station in life. Historians identify
the New World's original sins as dispossession of the Indians and
enslavement of Africans. How does Lucy represent and remember
these original sins?
5. If Crusoe planted a "second
Eden," how does Lucy as Lucifer change that Eden?
6. How does Lucy's status as a
woman (along w/ Kincaid's) change the sexual dynamics of the
self-other encounter? Contrast
Inter-racial Buddies
(all-male).
|
Jamaica Kincaid (b.
1949) |
British India 1858 |
Discussion Questions:
1. Continue dialogue between
Crusoe and
Lucy?
Extend to Man . . . King?
2. Continue Lucy as
Lucifer—compare to Friday?
4. Man Who Would be King:
How does the story typify colonial attitudes but also offer surprises in
relations b/w colonizer and colonized?
5. Compare to
Robinson Crusoe in novelistic
style and relations of colonizer-colonized? Role of technology (esp.
guns)?
6. The mystique of the British Empire remains powerful
for its former colonies. How does this mystique express or reveal
itself in Man . . . King? Compare & contrast
Lucy &
A Small Place.
7. What use to colonial-postcolonial studies of the
"white tribe" of Er-heb besides obvious racism? What mistakes does
Daniel make following from his assumptions about whiteness?
8. As ever, gender becomes entangled with racism in
cross-cultural studies. How are women regarded in this and other
colonial texts?
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Monday, 7 October:
midterm; no class meeting—instructor available in office during class hours
(and beyond).
Monday, 14 October
Reading Assignment:
Train to Pakistan through page 116
(through Kalyug chapter, up to Mano Majra chapter)
Train to Pakistan
reading guide
Student presentations
Discussion leader:
instructor
Web
Review:
Rumi
(poetry)
Web presenter:
Jenna Zucha
Web
Review:
(instructor)
1947: Partition
of India +
Punjab +
Sikhs (or sources on
this page);
Train to Pakistan 2007: Decolonization, Partition, and Identity in the
Transnational Public Sphere (ch. 1 of Kavita Daiya,
Violent
Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial
India. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2008.)
Pather Panchali
|
Agenda:
assignments, presenter?
research schedule web: Jenna
Discuss: Obj. 2a: fiction to learn history
71
Tagore;
Baul Minstrels;
Tagore song
Kincaid; millennialism 8, 72; Crusoe ch. 6; Train 1, 5, 40,
77
Demographic
Transition 169; shame /
honor & guilt / pride
The Bechdel Test
129 |
|
Discussion Questions:
Overall, keep up with questions about ethnic groups, identities,
markers--some review available. 1. Review
Obj. 2a:
Can literary fiction instruct students’
knowledge of world history and international relations? Compared to nonfictional
discourses of history,
political science, anthropology, economics, etc., how may colonial & postcolonial fiction
help more people learn world history, contemporary events, and the global future?
2.
Train to Pakistan is our one novel
to depict the moment of
decolonization or independence: How is the event depicted? Positively, India and
Pakistan become nations, but what earlier world is threatened or lost?
(Consider objective 7 on
millennialism.)
2a. How may the transition between two worlds be a change from a
traditional to a modern culture?
Consider gender, community, family, ethnicity, nationhood.
3. Re Obj. 2 on the novel: In multicultural India, how many voices can
a novel manage? What other novelistic dimensions? 4. How does Singh succeed (or not) in
representing great historical change as moving personal fiction? |
|
Sunday, 27 October: First
Research Post due (or before)
|
Discussion Questions:
1. (Obj. 2)
Continue to discuss
the
novel as the
defining
genre of
modernity, both for colonial and postcolonial cultures.
(obj. 2)
2. (Obj. 2)
How does Train to Pakistan make you care about a historical event that
many of us never heard of before?
2a. Our course's texts abound in outrages and
atrocities. Reading a text like Train to
Pakistan, what do we learn about how
historical horrors occur? What opportunities are seen to counter them?
3 What is
the novelistic and historical purpose or outcome of Nooran & Jugga's love? Compare / contrast with Iqbal, Partition.
(Nigeria)
4. Why the confusion over Iqbal's identity
and ethnic heritage? > extend to Jugga and Nooran + child. What distinct roles do Jugga and Iqbal
play?
5. Hukum Chand isn't a pleasant character but he may be
enigmatically heroic--is he?
6. Look for references to America (obj. 3).
pp. 2, 18, 35, 142, 148 |
10 Sikh Gurus |
Yama (Tibet, 16c); Jasmine 116-17 |
Background:
Jasmine begins
in postcolonial India near the time of partition,
perhaps in the Punjab area. Sikh terrorists (known here mostly as the
Khalsa Lions) are seeking an independent Sikh state. After her marriage
is destroyed, the heroine becomes a
transnational migrant
moving through the dangers of the Third World before arriving in the
USA: first Florida to be helped by a mainline Christian missionary; then
New York City in an Indian enclave and later as a nanny like Lucy, then
to the Midwest. The heroine changes her name with every new identity. Mukherjee is brilliant at keeping up
the pace of both economic and cultural dislocation of American life--enjoy the
ride!
Discussion Questions:
1.
Objective 4 on gender;
tradition / modernity; what has changed about the novel?
2. What's extraordinary about Mukherjee's voice as an immigrant
is how much she admires, endorses, and even models America's modernity—How
to respond?
3. How does the protagonist embody the "transnational
migrant" as a 3rd phase of colonialism / postcolonialism?
|
Kali
Train Pakistan 40 Kalyug, the dark age
Jasmine 52
Kali Yuga |
Ganpati / Ganesh; Jasmine 120 |
Discussion Questions:
1. USA as
hypermodernity: creative destruction of community >
celebration of triumphant individual self. Is it liberating or scary?
2. The end of
Jasmine may be mildly
disturbing. What novelistic conventions or expectations does it challenge? Is a new
narrative developing? Does it describe a new American or planetary experience?
2a. Seeing the
"old story" escaped or broken is somewhat exciting, but
does any satisfying new story emerge?
(Expected ending is sentimental?)
|
Bharati Mukherjee, b. 1940 |
Chinua Achebe |
Discussion Questions:
1.
Things Fall Apart
is taught in high schools and colleges across the
United States. If someone has read only one novel written by an African,
that novel is usually Things Fall Apart. How many
of you read it before? For which courses?
What lessons, themes, emphases?
2. In the
colonization-independence-postcolonial sequence, when does this story occur? (pre-colonial?)
3. How do missionaries represent different
aspects of colonialism? How are monotheism and
modern-global culture compatible?
4. What about African people qualifies as
“traditional?"
What attractions and risks to tradition? e.g.
What ranges to women's status in traditional societies?
5. How does the novel mediate b/w a western reader and
honest representation of Africa?
6. How does the novel achieve tragic depth or texture
instead of just National Geographic picturesque?
7. Traditional culture as gendered culture? 13, 23, 64, 109-10
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Nigeria in Africa |
Leopold Sedar Senghor |
Discussion Questions:
1. How does novel mediate b/w western reader and
honest representation of Africa?
2.
Distinguish the narrator's voice from those of the characters.
(obj. 2a re narrative and dialogue)
3. How does the novel achieve tragic depth or texture
instead of just National Geographic picturesque?
4. How may Things Fall Apart resemble a western Tragedy?
5.
How regard progress of colonization? 155, 174, 178
Modernity / tradition 124, 187,
203; 143 [revolutionary religion]; 144 not my father; 145
all sons of God; 147 [new religion answers Nwoye's questions]--cf 62;
148 [Nwoye] already beginning to learn some of the simple stories they
told; 152 school = read & write; forsakes parents = blessed; 207-8
|
Nigeria |
Sunday, 24 November: Second Research Posts
or Research Projects
due (or before)
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Discussion Questions for
both meetings on Heart of Darkness:
1. What knowledge of Conrad
(1857-1924)? What read?
Subject matter? (Unique biographical facts: English
Conrad's 3rd language [Polish > French
> English]; merchant mariner for 20 years)
2. from Obj. 2a: Can Colonizers be understood as other than
villains? Does dehumanizing the other automatically dehumanize the oppressor?
(Moral opposition increases drama, but moral relativism cultivates
relations.) After Postcolonial Studies, and especially in light of
Achebe's
article on "Racism in Heart of Darkness," is Conrad's novel worth
reading? With what qualifications or authority? What are our options?
3. How
does a novel succeed (or not) in humanizing its subjects?
4. Obj. 2 on the novel: How does
Heart of Darkness exemplify
Modernist fiction? (Compare Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf; contrast with Achebe?)
5. gender: how much does Conrad's
Modernist view remain gendered, comparable to African traditional culture?
2.50-1, 2.68, 2.71, 2.110
|
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) |
Monday, 9 December:
final exam
- Write exam in-class
during final exam period (7-9:50, Thursday 9 December 2009)
OR
- Write and send by email using 3-4
hours anytime after 2 December—deadline is Tuesday 10 December
Earlier Syllabi
1998
text list
2003
syllabus
2005 syllabus
2008 syllabus
2009 syllabus
2011 syllabus
Text guide: A Grain of
Wheat
Ngugi wa
Thiong'o
Kenya
"Peacocks at
Sunset" re India-Pakistan border, NYT 3 July 2012
Aaron
O'Connell, The U.S. Marines in the Banana Wars (lecture-discussion
at U.S. Naval Academy concerning U.S. military involvement in Caribbean and
Central America at turn of 20c)
William Butler Yeats, "The Great
Day"
Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
Christopher Caldwell, "Europe’s Other Crisis"
Soap Operas with a
Social Message
World languages (WaPo 23 April 2015)
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