Literature and Decolonisation Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course studies literature from around the world, in particular literature from and about the British Empire and its former locations. The course examines the representation of imperial processes and their effects and assesses the part that literary texts play in the project of decolonisation – understood as the critiquing, resisting and subverting of the fact and negative effects of imperialism. For example, students might study the representation of the Partition of India in the work of Anita Desai and Salman Rushdie, the composition and performance of Wole Soyinka’s 1960 play A Dance of the Forests to coincide with Nigerian Independence, the influence of Frantz Fanon’s auto-theory on the poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, or the ways in which Jamaica Kincaid ‘writes back’ to nineteenth-century fiction. The course concentrates primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century authors but brings into play earlier writing in order to give insight into the history of the British Empire, and to give context to forms of resistance. In assessing the realities of imperialism, its effects and its legacies, the course studies a variety of ethical theories, including of race, representation, and positionality, in order to provide frameworks both for interrogating forms of oppression and for asking how equality can be achieved. The legacies and realities of imperialism are traced up to the present day, as students are asked to consider the work that still needs to be done in order to bring about civic sustainability, and the part that writing can play in that process.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies. The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars/labs/studios/workshops 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group.

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups.

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150. 

Assessment

Formative

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

Summative Assessments

The portfolio will require students to engage with the key topics and theories of the course in a variety of forms. Students will select and apply theories to the literary practice of authors from across different regions; they will demonstrate close reading using decolonial approaches; and they will reflect on their own positions and contexts in relation to the texts and ethical frameworks under study.

The written assignment will then allow students to focus in more depth on a specific author and/or region and require engagement with some of the key topics and theories studied. 

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours). 

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Brathwaite, Kamau, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)
• Desai, Anita, Clear Light of Day (New York: Vintage, 2001)
• Mbembe, Achille, Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Rothermund, Dietmar, The Routledge Companion to Decolonization (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2006)
• Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994)
• Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African          Literature (London: Pearson, 1986) 

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• The English language and the British Empire
• Neocolonialism
• Counterdiscourse
• The politics and ethics of representation