ENG 225-01 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures

4 credits Fall

“The Empire Writes Back: Introduction to Postcolonial Studies.” Writers from countries and cultures colonized by Britain engaged with and reimagined canonical English literary texts. This critical relation to the canon inaugurated a new literary sensibility that explores concepts such as ‘writing back,’ ‘multiple englishes,’ ‘home,’ and ‘migration. This Anglophone fiction describes not only a literary and cultural tradition but also the possibilities of postcolonial futures. We will read literary works from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK such as Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart, Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, Salman Rushdie’s, East, West, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, with grade S, C, or better; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121; with grade S, C, or better, or third-year standing.
Instructor: Kapila