Postcolonial Literatures

Semester and Year Offered: IV Semester (Winter Semester, 2019)

Course Coordinator and Team: Vikram Singh Thakur

Email of course coordinator: vikram[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites: None

Aim: The course intends to introduce students to various literatures being written in postcolonial societies. These literatures reflect issues that are of immediate relevance to readers from postcolonial societies. By the end of the course the students will have gathered knowledge about such crucial issues like language, diaspora, culture, identity, history and nation that engage postcolonial studies today. The course will explore the aforementioned concerns through theoretical, literary and cultural texts drawn from various postcolonial nations.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

1. Introducing some Postcolonial issues
2. Postcolonial Drama
3. Postcolonial Fiction
4. Postcolonial Poetry

References:

Salman Rushdie, “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”

Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education

Gauri Viswanathan, “The Beginnings of English Literary Studies”

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature”

Achebe, Chinua, “The Politics of Language”.

Edward Said, from “Introduction”, Orientalism

Gauri Shinde, English Vinglish

Wole Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewel

Girish Karnad, Hayavadana

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Derek Walcott, “A Far Cry from Africa”, “Goats and Monkeys”

R. Parthasarathy, from “Rough Passage”

Suggested Readings:

Bill Ashcroft et al, ed. “Introduction”, The Empire Writes Back.

Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism.

Dennis Walder, Post-colonial Literatures in English: History, Language,Theory.

Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race .

Padmini Mongia, ed. Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader.

Tentative Assessment schedule with details of weightage: