EN938 Postcolonial Theory
Module Convenor: Dr Sorcha Gunne (s.gunne@warwick.ac.uk)
Office hour: Tuesday, 11am, H540
Time: Tuesday, 1:00-3:00 (term 2)
Location: (S0:20 - Social Studies)
This module is designed to offer an introduction to advanced study in the field of postcolonial literary studies. Assuming some familiarity (however limited) with some of the best-known works in the ‘postcolonial’ literary corpus (e.g., Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Edward W. Said’s critical writings) it aims to:
1) give students both a broad understanding of and a stake or investment in key conceptual, theoretical and methodological debates in the postcolonial studies field.
2) situate these debates institutionally, by thinking about them in relation to developments in academic work in fields and disciplines (e.g. history, anthropology, philosophy) that abut and influence postcolonial literary studies
3) contextualise the emergence and defining trajectories of postcolonial literary studies relative to wider social, political and intellectual developments.
The module will proceed through an interpolation (and sometimes pairing) of literary and ‘theoretical’ texts. Students should come to the module prepared to read quite extensively and widely.
‘Introduction: Overview’
Week 1:
Edward Said, ‘Crisis,’ Orientalism (1978).
Benita Parry, ‘The Institutionalization of Postcolonial Studies,’ 
The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (2004)
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, ‘Re-placing theory: Post-colonial writing and literary theory.’ The Empire Writes Back (2nd edn, 2002).
‘The Question of Representation’
Week 2: Assia Djebar, A Sister to Scheherazade
Week 3: Read with Neil Lazarus, “’A figure glimpsed in the rear view mirror’: The question of representation in ‘postcolonial’ Fiction,” The Postcolonial Unconscious (2011).
‘Narratives of Partition’
Week 4: Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark
Week 5: Joe Cleary, ‘Irish Studies, Colonial Questions: Locating Ireland in the Colonial World’ from Outrageous Fortunes (2007)
‘The Inheritance of Loss’
Week 6: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat.
Week 7: Brendon Nicholls ‘Reading Against the Grain (of Wheat),’ Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Gender, and the Ethics of Postcolonial Reading (2010).
Week 8: Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit. [Read with Benita Parry, “The New South Africa: Revolution Postponed, Internationalism Deferred,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 41(2): 179 – 188, 2005.]
‘Capital and Imperialism’
Week 9: Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory
Week 10: Chandra Mohanty ‘Under Western Eyes’ and ‘Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles’ from Feminism without Borders (2003).
