Advance Course

 

The aim of this course is to examine a selection of texts which can be grouped under the heading "post-colonial". We will examine this problematic term. What does it include? What are its boundaries? How are our reading practices influenced by viewing the texts through the postcolonial lens?

In our reading of literary and theoretical texts, we will explore the colonizer-colonized relationships and attempt to establish the links between the vexed categories of nationality and sexuality. Identity politics, the immigrant experience and the idea of home in a postcolonial world are some of the themes we'll address in this course.

We begin with a novel which takes place in colonial and post-colonial India and tells the story of two women whose experience of India across generations reflects both the allure and the dangers of a (Western) view of the East. The two following novels engage with the complex experiences of immigrants in the former Empire and detail the complex identity dilemmas they encounter. In Lahiri's collection of interlocked stories, we find second generation immigrants in the United States who face the cultural clashes between "America ness" and "India ness".

Rushdie's short homage to his favorite Hollywood film is also a comment on the immigrant experience as an imagined space of longing for an elsewhere which is also home.

Primary Texts

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Wizard of Oz by Salman Rushdie

 

Theoretical texts

Orientalism by Edward Said

The Empire Writes Back by Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin

Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Dangerous Liaisons by McClintock, Mufti and Shohat

 

Film and other media

The Wizard of Oz

The Buddha of Suburbia

Goodness Gracious Me

Heat and Dust

East is East

 

Course Requirements

Attendance and participation 10%

In class midterm 15%

Short responses/class presentations 15%

Final paper 60%