Undergraduate Course: Modernism and Empire (ENLI10338)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores the relationship between European imperialism and literary modernism, focusing primarily on British colonial contexts and legacies (in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific), but also engaging with other European empires (such as the French Caribbean and the Belgian Congo). We will analyse a range of texts published from the 1890s through to 1960, exploring the centrality of empire to various phases of literary modernism. Both late colonialism and modernism share many of the same structuring discourses, such as concerns over the decline and decay of ¿Western¿ civilization, and a preoccupation with finding new ways of defining human subjectivity and alterity (in the wake of the collapse of enlightenment humanism, and the rise of psychoanalytical and social Darwinist paradigms). |
| Course description |
We will explore the relationship between anxieties about the imperialist project, and certain stylistic and thematic innovations in modernist literature, including: (i) the preoccupation with Western degeneration (which is interpreted by some modernist writers as a consequence of inter-racial contact and miscegenation, while others hold that Western culture can be revitalised by outside cultural and artistic influences); (ii) a preoccupation with multiple subjectivities and limited/unreliable narrators; (iii) experiments with symbolism and imagism as alternatives to Victorian realism and positivism. We will question the degree to which modernism was complicit with, or opposed to, imperialism, exploring texts produced by British authors (such as George Orwell, Leonard Woolf and Joyce Cary) who participated in the administration of British imperial territories, as well as the work of writers more peripheral to the workings of empire (such as Joseph Conrad, and women writers such as Jean Rhys and Katherine Mansfield). We will also consider how modernism was taken up by writers (such as Mulk Raj Anand and Aime¿ Ce¿saire) situated at the colonial ¿margins¿, investigating cross-cultural friendships and alliances (such as those between E.M. Forster and Mulk Raj Anand), as well as counter-discursive interventions by postcolonial writers such as Chinua Achebe, whose novel No Longer at Ease (1960) serves as a riposte to Cary¿s Mister Johnson (1939).
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | A MINIMUM of 4 college/university level literature courses at grade B or above (should include no more than one introductory level literature course). Related courses such as civilisation or other interdisciplinary classes, Freshman Year Seminars or composition/creative writing classes/workshops are not considered for admission to this course. Applicants should also note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission. In making admissions decisions preference will be given to students who achieve above the minimum requirement with the typical visiting student admitted to this course having 4 literature classes at grade A.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 24 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Other Study Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
one hour autonomous learning group
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Standard model:
2500 word essay (40%) submitted mid-semester week 9
+ 3000 word final essay submitted at end of semester / in exam period (60%).
OR: Alternative model: alternative coursework assessment (40%)
+ 3000 word final essay submitted at end of semester / in exam period (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
|
| Academic year 2021/22, Part-year visiting students only (VV1)
|
Quota: 6 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Other Study Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
|
| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
one hour per week Autonomous Learning Group
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Standard model:
2500 word essay (40%) submitted mid-semester week 9
+ 3000 word final essay submitted at end of semester / in exam period (60%).
OR: Alternative model: alternative coursework assessment (40%)
+ 3000 word final essay submitted at end of semester / in exam period (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- develop the following skills through contributions to group discussion, independent reading, and assessed and non-assessed work.
- Understand the ways in which empire and its legacies has contributed to certain thematic and stylistic innovations in British (and other) literary modernism(s).
- Develop a critical vocabulary for analysing the thematics and aesthetics of modernist writing, drawing upon a range of theory and criticism (including, inter alia, formalist, Marxist, postmodernist and postcolonial perspectives).
- Analyse the active contribution of writers and cultures on the colonial 'periphery' to developments in (and critiques of) literary modernism.
- Articulate (in written and oral forms) a considered, informed sense of the breadth and range of responses to imperialism in course texts and reflect on good learning practice.
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Reading List
1) Course introduction; Joseph Conrad, ¿An Outpost of Progress¿ (1897); Rudyard Kipling, ¿Regulus¿ (1917) [available on LEARN]
2) Miscegenation and degeneration: Robert Louis Stevenson, ¿The Ebb Tide¿; Jack London, ¿Goodbye Jack¿ (1909) [the London story is available on LEARN]
3) India and modernity: E: M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
4) Class, caste and empire: Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable (1935)
5) Colonial administrators: Leonard Woolf, ¿Pearls and Swine¿ (1921) and selected letters; George Orwell, ¿Shooting an Elephant¿ (1936) [available on LEARN]
6) Settler women and empire: Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark (1937); selected stories by Katherine Mansfield (including ¿Je ne parle pas francais¿ and ¿The woman at the store¿)
7) Caribbean modernisms: Aime¿ Ce¿saire, Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (1939); selected poems by Una Marson (from The Moth and the Star, 1937; available on LEARN).
8) Africa and the British empire: Joyce Cary, Mister Johnson (1939), and ¿Umaru¿ [the short story is available on LEARN]
9) Nigerian modernities: Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960)
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email: michelle.keown@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Michael Butler
Tel: (0131 6)51 1513
Email: michael.butler@ed.ac.uk |
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