ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature

4 credits (Spring)

The Sea is History: Postcolonial Seascapes and Ocean Worlds. In the poem of the same name, “The Sea is History,’ the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott concludes, “in the salt chuckle of rocks/with their sea pools, there was the sound/like a rumour without any echo/of History, really beginning,” announcing a new artistic, aesthetic, and political credo. In this course we will study postcolonial ocean worlds, seascapes, novels by the sea and of the sea, and explore how oceans connect continents differently than land. The histories of the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, for instance, reveal an alternative map of trade, migration, indenture, slavery, and continental connections. We will study theoretical essays and secondary material along with fiction by Joseph Conrad, Nuruddin Farah, Amitav Ghosh, Yvonne Owour, Monique Roffey, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Romesh Gunesekera and Lindsey Collen.

Prerequisite: ENG 224, ENG 225, ENG 226, or ENG 229; with grade S, C, or better.
Instructor: Kapila