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

Undergraduate Course: Decolonization and the Novel (ENLI10206)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course facilitates a critical engagement with the novel's role in decolonization struggles and in particular traces the politics of writing in English for an international range of novelists with regard to specific dynamics in Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean and ultimately contemporary Britain itself. The debilitations and enablements of writing in the language of one's supposed master will be considered. The course will also provide a theoretical analysis of key concepts in postcolonial criticism such as hybridity in gauging whether such positions are positive or negative conditions.
Course description This course facilitates a critical engagement with the novel's role in decolonization struggles and in particular traces the politics of writing in English for an international range of novelists with regard to specific dynamics in Africa, and then the Caribbean and ultimately contemporary Britain itself. The debilitations and enablements of writing in the language of one's supposed master will be considered. Attention will be given to the social and ideological work undertaken by the novel in its history as a form, as well as to its usage in these decolonizing contexts. The course will also provide a theoretical analysis of key concepts in postcolonial criticism such as hybridity in gauging whether such positions are positive or negative conditions. In addition to affirming resistances within colonies themselves the course also concludes with an analysis of diasporic writing within Britain itself as voices from those former colonies begin to articulate themselves from the imperial metropoles or centres. The course will also question whether the idea of postcoloniality is itself a fiction in the context of the neo-imperialism of the global market and will trace the ambivalences that key writers harbour about moments of supposed national liberation. In resisting a stark binary between colonizer and colonized, the course considers the development of subaltern studies and addresses a series of displacements concerning race, ethnicity, gender and class and discusses how such interstices complicate one another yet also provide the terrain upon which oppositional and properly emancipatory identities may be constructed.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: Literary Studies 1A (ENLI08020) AND Literary Studies 1B (ENLI08021) OR English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016) AND Literary Studies 2A: English Literature in the World, 1380-1788 (ENLI08024) AND Literary Studies 2B: English Literature in the World, post-1789 (ENLI08025) OR Scottish Literature 2A (ENLI08022) AND Scottish Literature 2B (ENLI08023) OR English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs Essential course texts
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
Students will gain an in depth knowledge of postcolonial fiction and will develop the necessary skills to analyse a range of decolonizing societies in their specificity and to garner an assured familiarity with key debates within postcolonial studies and theory.
Reading List
Primary Works

Postcolonial Theory Introduction and readings (Frantz Fanon);

Africa Writes Back: Colonialism and Decolonization Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart; No Longer At Ease
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ngugi wa Thiong¿o, Devil On the Cross

Gender, Displacement, Decolonization:
Bessie Head, A Question of Power
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English
Afro-Caribbean Consciousness
George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother

Windrush, The Caribbean and Britain: Colonization in Reverse
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
Caryl Phillips, The Final Passage

Additional Information
Course URL http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements Numbers are limited to 15, with priority given to students taking degrees involving English or Scottish Literature and Visiting Students placed by the Admissions Office. Students not in these categories need the written approval of the Head of English Literature before enrolling. In the case of excess applications places will be decided by ballot.
Additional Class Delivery Information 1 hour(s) per week for 10 week(s): autonomous learning group at times to be arranged.
KeywordsENLI10206 Decolonization Novel
Contacts
Course organiserDr Aaron Kelly
Tel: (0131 6)50 3071
Email: Aaron.Kelly@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Iain Harrison
Tel:
Email: iharriso@ed.ac.uk
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