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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: Contemporary Postcolonial Writing (PG Version) (ENLI11210)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThe literature of the Anglophone world outside the British Isles is extraordinarily rich and diverse, and can be productively considered through the lens of postcolonial theory, a body of thought that is attentive to the ways literary production is inflected by historical, geographical and cultural factors resulting from the aftereffects of imperialism. Through a selection of texts by authors and film-makers from around the globe, we will explore how those living with the legacies of colonialism use their work to engage with this history, and how their texts ¿write back¿ to the canon of English literature, problematising its representational strategies and asking us to reconsider how, and why, literary value is assigned. We will consider texts which examine colonial encounters in the past, which evaluate the historical legacies of these encounters, and which look to the future, covering topics such as diaspora, hybridity, orality, gender, ¿race¿, resistance, and national identity. As we go, we will interrogate the concept of the postcolonial. What are its limitations? What does it obscure? And how useful is it as an analytical category for studying literature?
Course description Week 1: Introduction to the course
Week 2: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Week 3: M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! (2008)
Week 4: Ashutosh Gowariker (dir.), Lagaan (2001)
Week 5: Kate Grenville, The Secret River (2005)
Week 6: Thomas King, Green Grass Running Water (1993)
Week 7: Damien O'Donnell (dir.), East is East (1999)
Week 8: Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004)
Week 9: J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1999)
Week 10: Review & conclusion


Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  15
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 196 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Final essay of 4,000 words (70%)

Oral presentation, delivered in small groups, 8-10 minutes in length (10%)

A portfolio of reading journal entries (20%)

Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Engage critically with primary texts and demonstrate how they relate to the concerns that have emerged from postcolonial theory.
  2. Explain the meaning and significance of concepts central to postcolonial studies.
  3. Articulate some of the complexities of the relationship between texts written in colonial/postcolonial nations, and text produced in centres of cultural and political dominance.
  4. Defend their point of view on the above topics both verbally and in written form
Reading List
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso/NLB, 1983. Print.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. Print.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Benwell, Bethan, James Procter, and Gemma Robinson. Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture: Critical Theory and the Postcolonial Perspective. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.
Boehmer, Elleke, Katy Iddiols, and Robert Eaglestone, eds. J.M. Coetzee in Context and Theory. London: Continuum, 2009. Print.
Davidson, Arnold E., Priscilla L. Walton, and Jennifer Andrews. Border Crossings: Thomas King's Cultural Inversions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Print.
Eichorn, Kate. "Multiple Registers of Silence in M. Nourbese Philip's Zong!" XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics 23 (2010): 33-39. Print.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 1986. Print.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Print.
Goebel, Walter, and Saskia Schabio, eds. Locating Postcolonial Narrative Genres. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Head, Dominic. J.M. Coetzee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print.
Innes, Catherine Lynette. The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
Kossew, Sue, ed. Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 17-38. Print.
Kossew, Sue. Writing Woman, Writing Place: Contemporary Australian and South African Fiction. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Lazarus, Neil. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.
Lazarus, Neil. Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print.
Quayson, Ato. Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process? Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2000. Print.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Sell, Jonathan, ed. Metaphor and Diaspora in Contemporary Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print.
Stadtler, Florian. "Cultural Connections: 'Lagaan' and Its Audience Responses". Third World Quarterly 26.3 (2005): 517-524. Print.
Zapata, Sarah. "Contesting Identities: Representing British South Asians in Damien O'Donnell's East Is East". Journal of English Studies 8 (2010): 175-186. Print.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements Jointly taught with ENLI10361
KeywordsCPW
Contacts
Course organiserDr Anouk Lang
Tel: (0131 6) 5 50 8936
Email: Anouk.Lang@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk
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