ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature (Spring)

4 credits (Spring)

This course explores the phenomenon of nationalism in literature from South Africa, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India. How have writers from these countries articulated a national imaginary? Now often understood to be a somewhat pejorative and outdated concept, associated with military chauvinism or aggression, nationalism marked the first wave of anti-imperial literature. We will study current critiques of this concept in postcolonial literature, and also examine the literary and historical genealogy of concepts such as “civilization,” “the primitive,” and “modernity” which are all associated with the nation. Which groups of people feel oppressed and excluded from the nation? In what ways does the concept of the nation have continuing theoretical and material significance? These are some of the questions we will study in the essays and novels of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Mahasweta Devi, Shyam Selvadurai, Chinua Achebe, J. M Coetzee, and Nuruddin Farah. We will also read critical essays by, among others, Ben Anderson, Partha Chatterjee, and Kumkum Sangari. The objectives of the course are to explore postcolonial fiction in relation to theoretical concepts inherited from disciplines such as anthropology and history about subjects, nations, and narrative forms. We will also study the relationship between the postcolonial novel and postmodern fiction.

Prerequisite: ENG 224, ENG 225, ENG 226 or ENG 229.
Instructor: Kapila