Contemporary Postcolonial Writing (PG)

This course aims to introduce students to recent writing in English across a range of genres - novels, films, poetry and non-fiction prose - by authors from countries around the globe. It presents students with a range of perspectives and debates that have entered literary theory via postcolonial studies, and seeks to prompt them to use these ideas to reconsider texts they have read in other classes and contexts. The literature of the Anglophone world outside the British Isles is extraordinarily rich and diverse, and can be productively considered through the lens of postcolonial theory, a body of thought that is attentive to the ways literary production is inflected by historical, geographical and cultural factors resulting from the aftereffects of imperialism. Through a selection of literary texts and films by African, Australian, Canadian, Caribbean, Indian and English authors, we will explore how those living with the legacies of colonialism used their work to engage with this history, and how their texts "write back" to the canon of English literature, problematising its representational strategies and asking us to reconsider how, and why, literary value is assigned. The course is divided into three broad themes - colonial encounters, indigenous voices and historical legacies - and will cover topics including diaspora, hybridity, orality, gender, "race", resistance, and national identity. As we go, we will continue to interrogate the concept of the postcolonial. What are its limitations? What does it obscure? And how useful is it as an analytical category for studying literature?   Credit level: 10 Year taken: Year 4 Undergraduate SCQF credits: 20

Not running in 2025/26