Studies in Colonial & Postcolonial Lit (465-0-20)

Topic

Postcolonial Method

Instructors

Kalyan Nadiminti

Meeting Info

University Hall 418: Wed 2:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Is there such a thing as a postcolonial method? If so, what are its spatial, temporal, and theoretical constructs as well as its limits? This course examines the rise and evolution of postcolonial studies as a disciplinary apparatus across literature, history, and culture. The course will examine how postcolonial theory thinks through vectors of colonialism, capitalism, race, and gender in distinct ways. This course will begin with key theoretical texts like Orientalism and Masks of Conquest, work through major debates of the 1980s to 2000s around postcoloniality, literary form, and subaltern historiography, before spending the last third of class around race and contemporary imperial formations. In effect, we will think about the formation of postcolonial studies both through and against Cultural Studies, the Subaltern studies group, invocations of the Third World, the institutional development of Global South theory, and finally the fiercest critiques of postcolonial studies like Dalit studies and decolonial studies. Postcoloniality has been invoked to modify categories like the unconscious and sovereignty, but faulted for its aura and exoticism: how do these approaches allow us to think about the future of postcolonial studies and its core political commitments?

Class Materials (Required)

Readings will include BR Ambedkar, M.K. Gandhi, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Sylvia Wynter, Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Natalie Melas. Neil Lazarus, and others. We will also dip into some literary texts like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, and Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.