Handbook

The European project of colonial expansion has defined global modernity and some of the most compelling literary work in the modern and contemporary period has emerged in response to this imperial history. In pursuit of some of these dynamic texts, this course will travel to the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia and the Pacific as well as settler-invader nations such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The compass points of colonial-imperial experience and writing in English will orient our comparison of different texts and contexts and prompt us to read in detail for rich and often disruptive literary aesthetics.

As we travel the world in the wake of empire, we will explore key texts in light of contemporary debates about race and gender, First Nations cultural production and the significance of decolonial thinking. We will consider literary language and literary tradition as well as the representation of displacements from and disruptions to homelands, including diasporic and migrant writing and writing from the war zone.  Modules such as “diaspora”, “resistance/crisis” and “poetics” will organise fictional, poetic and dramatic texts in line with key terms and concepts central to the field. The amazing field of postcolonial theory will direct and deepen our interest in working beyond Eurocentrism, and toward critique and transformation.