Fall Semester 2003
Professor Lincoln Shlensky
Contact information:
E-mail:
shlensky@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
Ph: 251-460-7550
Office hours: T 1:45-3:15 PM
TH
1:45-3:15 PM
(and
by appointment)
Course description:
The legacy of European
colonization in Asia, Africa, the Americas and elsewhere continues to
reverberate in societies that were subject to colonial depredations and
brutality. This seminar is
designed to introduce students to a broad range of fiction, film and critical
theory that arises out of, and responds to, colonization after its nominal
demise. In addition to surveying
some of the major cultural and intellectual trends associated with postcolonial
discourse, a central preoccupation of this seminar will be to examine the
relation between postcolonialism and the disruption of master narratives of
Western modernity. We shall ask
how, and to what extent, postcoloniality ruptures modern narratives of time,
nation and identity, and helps to precipitate (and perhaps contest) the advent
of postmodernity and globalization.
In order to understand the meaning and extent of such a rupture, we will
turn to some of the now canonical as well as the less-known literary, film,
and critical texts of postcolonialism, including those of Conrad, Achebe,
Csaire, Fanon, Spivak, Bhabha, Djebar, Rushdie, Tahimik, Suleri, Sembne and
others. Among the questions we
shall pose in reading and viewing these texts: What is the emerging relation between traditional
metropolitan centers and the marginalized sites of the postcolony? Who is
the contemporary postcolonial subject, what are her or his concerns, and how
are these concerns made legible in the West? How does the cultural hybridization of postcolonialism
facilitate and/or subvert the globalizing forces of postmodernity?
Requirements:
Full attendance and
participation in class discussion, oral presentations on readings and films
(20%), EITHER a 3-page review paper based on a class presentation (due two
weeks after the presentation and worth 30%) and an 8-page seminar paper (50%)
on a relevant topic, OR a 12-page seminar paper (80%).
Your seminar paper must be
discussed with me in advance and you must receive my agreement. You should write a 200- to 500-word
proposal for your paper by the eighth week of class. You will be expected to present your seminar papers
abstract and bibliography to the class members. The seminar paper is due at the beginning of the last
class. No incompletes, please.
Note on seminar paper
proposals:
When you come to class in
week 8, please bring enough copies of a short (200-500 word) abstract of the
paper you propose to write, plus a working bibliography for everyone in the
class. We will discuss these
abstracts in the ensuing weeks.
How do you know you have a
well-defined research topic? You
should be able to express it in a form that fits the following format: I am interested in asking this QUESTION
of this OBJECT because I want to test this HYPOTHESIS.
Because all classes do not
progress at the same rate, the instructor may wish to modify the above
requirements or their timing as circumstances dictate. For example, the instructor may wish to
change the number and sequence of assignments. Students shall be given adequate notification of any such
changes.
If you have a specific
disability that qualifies you for academic accomodations, please notify the
professor and provide certification from Disability Services (Office of Special
Student Services). The Office of
Special Student Services is directed by Ms. Bernita Pulmas and is located in the
Student Center, Room 270, phone 460-7212.
Required texts:
Laura Chrisman and Patrick
Williams, eds.,
ISBN: 0231100213
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
ISBN: 0312114915
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
ISBN: 0385474547
Aim Csaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native
Land
Translated by Mireille Rosello
ISBN: 1852241845
ISBN: 0140132708
Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade,
vol. 1
ISBN: 0435086219
Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical
Introduction
ISBN: 0231112734
Currently out-of-stock with
the publisher (availability details to be announced)
Course Reader:
A course reader with
required and recommended articles will be available for purchase. Details to be announced.
Screenings:
Film screenings will be held
in class whenever possible. When
not possible, the instructor will arrange outside screenings and/or will
endeavor to make the films available for viewing at the library.
Reading and screening
schedule:
Week 1 August 28 Introduction
Kipling, The White Mans
Burden, in The Bedford Anthology, pp. 104-6
Week 2 September 4 Colonial contexts
Humberto Sols, Lucia (Part I screened in
class)
Conrad, Heart of Darkness (apx. 99 pp.)
Week 3 September 11 Responding to colonialism
Humberto Sols, Lucia (Part II screened in
class)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, pp. 1-35,
52-62, 120-125
Achebe, An Image of Africa (1975) in Bedford
pp. 107-117 [Reader]
Week 4 September 18 Beginnings of postcolonial
literature
Humberto Sols, Lucia (Part III screened in
class)
Achebe, Things Fall Apart, pp. 136-153, 174-209
Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, pp. 1-22
Week 5 September 25 Orientalism: Saids legacy
Gillo Pontecorvo, The
Battle of Algiers (first half screened in class)
Edward Said, from Orientalism in Williams and
Chrisman, pp. 132-49
Gandhi, Postcolonial
Theory, pp. 23-41, 64-80
Week 6 October 2 Revolutionary disruptions and
anti-colonial nationalism
Gillo Pontecorvo, The
Battle of Algiers (second half)
Fanon, from Black Skin, White Masks in Bedford,
pp. 129-135 [Reader]
Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth in
Williams and Chrisman, pp. 36-52
Aim Csaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native
Land, pp. 1-51
Week 7 October 9 Postcolonialism and Modernity
Isaac Julian, Frantz
Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (video excerpts in class)
Assia Djebar, Fantasia, pp. 1-79
Homi Bhabha, Race, Time and the Revision of
Modernity in Moore-Gilbert, pp. 166-90 [Reader]
Week 8 October 16
PAPER PROPOSALS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES DUE IN CLASS
Week 9 October 23 Mimicry and postmodernism
Djibril Diop Mambety, Touki Bouki (Part I in
class)
Djebar, Fantasia, pp. 80-157
Bhabha, Of Mimicry and Man in The Location of
Culture, pp. 85-92 [Reader]
Week 10 October 30 Gender and Postcolonialism
Djibril Diop Mambety, Touki Bouki (Part II in
class)
Djebar, Fantasia, pp. 157-227
Sara Suleri, Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the
Postcolonial Condition in Williams and Chrisman, pp. 244-267
Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory, pp. 81-101
Week 11 November 6 The Subaltern
Shekhar Kapur, The Bandit Queen
[or Flora Gomez, The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Udju Azul di Yonta)] (video
excerpts in class]
Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? in Williams and
Chrisman, pp. 66-111
Week 12 November 13 Shifting borders: Center, Periphery,
and Diaspora
Charles Burnett, Killer of Sheep (video
excerpts in class)
Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien, De Margin and De
Center [Reader]
Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children, pp. 1-68
Week 13 November 20 Globalization
Satyajit Ray, Ghare-Baire [The Home and the
World], or Mona Hatoum, Measures of Distance (video excerpts in
class)
Arjun Appadurai, Disjuncture and Difference in the
Global Cultural Economy in Williams and Chrisman, pp. 324-339.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, The Power in the Story, pp.
1-30 [Reader]
Week 14 November 27
[Thanksgiving holiday; no class]
Week 15 December 4
Concluding discussion
Kidlat Tahimik, Perfumed Nightmare, (video
excerpts in class)
Frederick Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic,
pp. 186-213 [Reader]
Recommendations for further inquiry (some of these are in the Reader):
Stam and Shohat, Unthinking
Eurocentrism, pp. 90-140
Achille Mbembe, Time on the Move in On the
Postcolony, pp. 1-23
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture
of Modernity, pp. 1-40
Neruda, The United Fruit
Co. (poem), in Bedford, pp. 686-687
Mikheil Kalatozishvili, Soy Cuba/Ya
Kuba [I Am Cuba]
J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians,
1-30
Ousmane Sembne, Le Camp de Thiaroye