135053 PS PS Social history of literature: Introduction to Postcolonial Literature and Theory (2020W)

1: COLONIALISM AND ANTI-COLONIALISM

Week 1 Introduction (October 5)

Week 2 Colonial and anti-colonial discourses (October 12)
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1885) - excerpt
Karen Blixen, Out of Africa (1937) (pp. 32-42 and 254-255 and 269-271)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Her Cook, Her Dog: Karen Blixen’s Africa” (1993)

Week 3 Colonial and anti-colonial discourses (October 19)
“Negro” from Enlightenment Encyclopedia (18th century)
George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)
Doris Lessing, “The Old Chief Mshlanga” (1951)

Background reading:
Justin Edwards, Postcolonial Literature. Introduction.

2: POSTCOLONIALISM

Week 4 What are postcolonial literatures? (November 9)
Jamaica Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time” (1991)
Ama Ata Aidoo, “Maleing Names in the Sun” from The Girl Who Can and Other Stories (1997)
Salman Rushdie, “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance” The Times, July 3, 1982

Background reading:
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Introduction, from The Empire Writes Back (1989)
John McLeod, Chapter 1 in Beginning Postcolonialism (2000)

Week 5 Re-placing language (November 16)
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (1985) – excerpt
Gabriel Okara, The Voice (1964) – excerpt

Background reading:
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Chapter 2 from The Empire Writes Back (1989)
Justin Edwards, Postcolonial Literature. Chapter 3: Language

Week 6 Re-writing history and writing back: Caribbean contexts (November 23)
Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John (1986) – excerpt
V.S. Naipaul, “Columbus and Crusoe” (1967)

Background reading:
C. L. Innes, Chapter 3: “Alternative Histories and Writing Back” in The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2007)

Week 7 Postcolonial hybridity, modernity and authenticity (November 30)
Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John (1986) – excerpt
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “African ‘authenticity’ and the Biafran experience” (2008)

Background reading:
Justin Edwards, Postcolonial Literature. Chapter 13: Hybridity
John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism (2000), 216-221.
Week 8 Theorizing race in postcolonialism (December 7)
Frantz Fanon, “The Fact of Blackness”, from Black Skin, White Masks (1952), pp. 1-6.
Dambudzo Marechera, “Black Skin What Mask” from The House of Hunger (1978)
Chinelo Okparanta, “Fairness” from Happiness, Like Water (2013)
Photo essay: Oxford students protest against stereotypes: http://itooamoxford.tumblr.com/

Background reading:
John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism (2000), pp. 110-120.
Homi Bhabha, “The Other Question: stereotype, discrimination and the discourse of colonialism”, The Location of Culture (1994), pp. 94-120.

Week 9 Postcolonialism and feminism (December 14)
Ama Ata Aidoo, Changes (1991) - excerpt
June Eric Udorie, “Can We All Be Feminists”? (2018)

Background reading:
John McLeod, Chapter 6, “Postcolonialism and Feminism” in Beginning Postcolonialism (2000)

Week 10 Theorizing language (January 11)
Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language” (1965) from Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “The Language in African Literature” from Decolonising the Mind (1986)
Chinua Achebe, “Politics and Politicians of Language in African Literature”, from Education of a British-Protected Child (2009)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie interview by Ada Azodo, 2007

Background reading:
John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism (2000), pp. 122-129.
Justin Edwards, Postcolonial Literature. Chapter 13: Hybridity

Week 11 Re-writing the world: neocolonialism and globalization (January 18)
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988)

Background reading:
Justin Edwards, Postcolonial Literature (2008), Chapters 7 (Travel) and 15 (Globalization)