Handbook

Some of the most compelling writing in English in the last half century has been produced by writers who come from, or are writing from, places outside established centres of imperial or literary power. In this course, you will get a chance to read a range of this dynamic literary production, including texts emerging from the Caribbean, from sub-Saharan Africa and subcontinental India, and from the settler-invader nations such as Canada and New Zealand and the multiplicity that comprises the Pacific.

We will consider this writing from the point of view of legacies of European colonialism and debates in ‘postcolonial’ thinking, as well as emerging ideas about transnational writing and world literary systems. In particular, writing ‘after the colony’ involves us in urgent considerations of race and gender, language and literary tradition, migration and diaspora, First Nations cultural production and decolonial theory. As you read or watch a selection of novels, short stories, poems, plays and film you will have an opportunity to think about the creative disruptions, revisions and pleasures of postcolonial literary and visual form.