This module introduces students to postcolonial theory.  The students will be introduced to the definitions of and debates associated with this field of study.  They will also be taught how to read race, class, gender, sexuality and identities in texts through this theoretical lens.

At the end of this module, students will become familiar with a number of arguments that inform current postcolonial analysis and will have gained the general ability to work within postcolonial cultural studies.  In particular, they will also be taught to apply postcolonial theory to literary texts.

Guidance on writing learning outcomes can be accessed at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/learning/practices/learningoutcomesgn/learningoutcomesgnote.html

Timetabled sessions include lectures and discussion sessions where students may have the opportunity to make presentations and/or lead discussion. There will be a weekly lecture during the semester supported by a weekly seminar. The lectures aim to provide key knowledge and critical perspectives on all the texts on the module; the seminars provide the opportunity for close analysis and small group discussion. The module essentially comprises two units of intense study to be completed in one semester.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME?

Students are expected to attend and participate in the lectures and seminars for all modules on which they are enrolled. Students with good cause to be absent should inform their module leaders, who will provide the necessary support. Students with extenuating circumstances should submit the Extenuating Circumstances Form in accordance with the School’s procedures.

The total number of hours which students are expected to devote to each 20-credit module is 200. Of these, 30 hours will be contact hours with staff (lectures and seminars); the remaining 170 hours should be spent on self-directed learning for that module (reading, preparation for seminars, research, reflection, formative writing, assessed work, exam revision).  There are also additional seminars and workshops that students are able to attend.

Particular skills of the module bear upon reading and understanding postcolonial theory and students will be taught the cornerstone texts of this theoretical frame.  They will be taught how to intersect postcolonial thought with feminist studies and literary studies.  In addition, they will also be exposed to texts that show the evolution of postcolonial theory to different and new areas of thought.  Examining these materials requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to different forms of English usage, and historical and political awareness. Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information, operating in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas and producing clear, informed arguments in a professional manner.

Essay (3200 words) = 100%
Approx date of assessment in May

Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology. ed Gregory Castle (Required)

Relocating Postcolonialism, eds. David Theo Goldberg and Ato Quayson. (Required)

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Required)

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Required)

Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (optional)

Schedule of Readings

Week 1: Introduction to the class. Please start reading Jane Eyre followed by  Wide Sargasso Sea and by this week and bring it to all seminars from now on. 

Week 2: Definitions: Benita Parry, “Direction and Dead Ends in Postcolonial Studies, and Frantz Fanon,   “Spontaneity: Its Strength and Weaknesses”.

Week 3:  Definitions Contd: Edward Said, “Discrepant Experiences” and Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency.”

Week 4: Race:  David Theo Goldberg, “Racial Rule.” Frantz Fanon, from Black Skin, White Masks, “The Fact of Blackness”

Week 5: Gender: Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman’s Question” and Avtar Brah, “Diaspora, Border and Transnational Identities” 

READING WEEK

Week 6: Identity: Finish up discussion from last week and Homi Bhabha, “Speaking of Postcoloniality in the Continuous Present”.

Week 7: Moira Ferguson, “Sending the Younger Son” and Stuart Hall, “Negotiating Carribean Identities.”

Week 8: Amina Mama, “Sheroes and Villians” and Anne Mclintock, “Race, Cross-Dressing and the Cult of Domesticity.”

Week 9: Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts” and Liz Deloughrey, “Postcolonialism”

Week 10: Summary

INDICATIVE READING AND RESOURCE LIST:

Homi K.Bhabha, The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994

Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, eds Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Sankaran Krishna, Globalization and Postcolonialism. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.

Ania Loomba, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama. Oxford and New York : OUP, 1992

Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, eds Elizabeth Deloughrey and George Handley. Oxford: OUP, 2011.

Postcolonial Studies Reader. 2^nd Edition. Eds Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin. London and New York: Routledge, 1995

Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Eds Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul and Jed Esty. Durham, Duke UP, 2005.

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Random House, 1993.

Gayatri Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London:  Harvard UP, 1999.