Studies in Gender, Sexuality & Representation (307-0-20)

Topic

Sex in the Postcolony

Instructors

Ishan Mehandru

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-325: Mon, Wed 10:00AM - 12:30PM

Overview of class

New Topic: Sex in the Postcolony

Sex in the Postcolony
Course Description: This course will explore how literary writers and scholars have not only identified the collusion of colonial and patriarchal structures to foreground the oppression of gendered subjects but also offered sex and sexuality as a methodological tool for destabilizing relations across racial, national, and religious identities. Our readings will primarily consist of translated and anglophone short stories and novels as well as films and documentaries that delve into issues of embodiment, labour, kinship, desire, and queerness across diverse geographies, including colonial, modern, and contemporary South Asia, the Caribbean, and Britain. We will ask: how do we appreciate the silences and textures of "third-world women's writing" without reifying categories such as the "third-world" and "women" in the first place? What are the pitfalls and potentialities of thinking about a transnational or multicultural feminist politics in times of neoliberal precarity and rising authoritarianism? Can we envision a politics of sexual desire, queerness, or pleasure that undoes identitarian formations, instead of settling for a short-sighted politics of inclusivity? We will develop a critical framework for closely reading our texts by drawing from scholars in postcolonial, psychoanalytic, and queer theoretical schools such as Gayatri Spivak, Saidiya Hartman, Ranjana Khanna, Gayatri Gopinath, and Ann McClintock, among others. Writers, novelists, and filmmakers might include Jean Rhys, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ismat Chughtai, Shyam Selvadurai, Mahasweta Devi, Mira Nair, Shohini Ghosh, and Bernardine Evaristo. Students will be expected to submit short response-papers based on our primary readings and viewings.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
Face to face: In person, in campus space