HENB01483U English - Elective Subject, topic 3: Postcolonial Studies in the 21st Century: Four Stories, Four Themes

Volume 2024/2025
Education

Engelsk

Content

Where is postcolonialism heading in the 21st century? What themes are (still) relevant? What (new) stories are told, and how are they told? In what ways do these themes and stories engage with the past – and the present? In this course we will respond to such broad queries by studying four central postcolonial themes and stories through close readings of seven recent novels (and a few classic texts) which we will study in comparative pairs under the rubrics of ‘Orientalism Revisited – Writing Back, Pointing Forwards’, ‘Race, Gender and Identities – Current Complexities’, ‘Subaltern London – Poverty and Protests’, and ‘A Changing Europe – New Migrant Trajectories’. This course will give you a chance to understand what postcolonial studies is (and was) and where it is going – and, not least, why it is still relevant in the 21st century.

Tentative reading list:

  1. Orientalism Revisited – Writing Back, Pointing Forwards (UR)

William Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil (1925), ‘P & O’ and ‘The Letter’, from The Casuarina Tree (1926)

Tan Twa Eng, The House of Doors (2023)

  1. Race, Gender and Identities – Current Complexities (ERK)

Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (2019)

Awkaeke Emezi, Freshwater (2018)

  1. Subaltern London – Poverty and Protests (UR)

Guy Gunaratne, In Our Mad and Furious City (2018)

Nikita Lalwani, You People (2020)

  1. A Changing Europe – New Migrant Trajectories (ERK)

Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (2017)

Helon Habila, Travellers (2019)

  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 84
  • Preparation
  • 325,5
  • Total
  • 409,5
Oral
Collective
Feedback by final exam (In addition to the grade)
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Other
Criteria for exam assesment