Time Schedule:
Louis O Chude-Sokei
ENGL 316
Seattle Campus
Readings of major texts and writers in postcolonial literature and culture. Surveys some of the most important questions and debates in postcolonial literature, including issues of identity, globalization, language, and nationalism. Cultural focus may vary; see professor for specific details.
Class description
This course is a basic introduction to the issues and assumptions of a loose body of literature described as Post-colonial. This description is due to those literatures emerging from or in relationship to areas of the world that were once formally colonized by European powers and/or American cultural and political interests: India, Africa, the Caribbean for example. Though focused primarily on twentieth and twenty-first century texts, we will explore the entire history of this literature as complex manifestations of changing cultural relationships. We will also explore their idiosyncratic styles, visions and political views as products of a world where cultures, languages and ideas have become brutally mixed and gloriously mangled. Authors may include, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Chinua Achebe, Edwidge Danticat, R.K. Narayan, Wole Soyinka, Pauline Melville, Samuel Selvon or Ama Ata Aidoo.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
