Postcolonial Studies in the English-Speaking World

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE GRADUATE COURSE IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

COURSE TITLE: POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD

Syllabus

DESCRIPTION: The course examines the nature and characterization of postcolonial studies in the area of Anglophone literature. By analysing a selection of theoretical and literary texts, students will be encouraged to take a critical outlook of different postcolonial methodologies, in order to gain consciousness of the impact of postcolonial theory on and through fiction. Specifically, the dynamic link between colonial and postcolonial literature and culture will be analysed in relation to the concepts of identity, migration, and race.

NUMBER OF CREDITS: 8

INSTRUCTOR: Tania Zulli, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature

METHOD OF PRESENTATION: The Course will be taught by following Anglo-American teaching methodologies. Short didactic lectures imparted by the teacher – with the help of power point projections and audio-visual material – will be associated with seminars and tutorials with a special focus on in-class discussions, promoting interaction among students. Specifically, classes will be partly inspired to flipped classroom teaching, based on home reading of primary sources (articles, book excerpts, novels and short-stories) and class discussion. Students will be required to perform active reading, to form a critical opinion about the specific topic they are facing and discuss about it with their classmates and teacher. Also, they will be asked to give a class presentation of a chosen topic. Active participation to classes will allow, among other things, the improvement of language skills and the ability to engage in a discussion about subjects of common interest. Students will be coordinated, stimulated and helped by the teacher in class.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: By the end of the course, students should have an understanding of the main aspects of contemporary postcolonial theories, and achieve a critical awareness of the wide-ranging thematic influence of race and identity topics, with a specific focus on South African literary texts. The emphasis on migration, as developed through literary texts both in nineteenth-century and modern literature, will be instrumental to the connection of such themes to modern social and cultural issues.

REQUIRED WORK AND FORM OF ASSESSMENT: Attendance and participation: 30% Home reading and class discussion: 40% Final oral exam: 30%

CONTENT:

PART I Introducing Postcolonial Studies

1. Introduction and course description

Week 1 1. Defining the terms: colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, postcolonialism 2. Postcolonialism: When? Where? Who? What? 3. The “death” of postcolonialism

Week 2 1. Talking about the English-Speaking World: Which Language? Whose Language? 2. Adopting another language: the experience of Jumpa Lahiri 3. Hybridity, Ambivalence, Mimicry

PART II – Postcolonial Literature and the Question of Migration

Week 3 1. The Issue of Migration: Cultural Problems and Perspectives Isolation vs. integration, silence vs. communication 2. Migration writing, writing about migration 3. Building an Idea of Transnational Fiction

Week 4 1. Past and present migrations: Joseph Conrad and Nadine Gordimer 2. From past to present: a transnational approach 3. Migration writing, writing about migration

Week 5 1. Swept from the Sea 2. Amy Foster and Swept from the Sea: a comparative reading 3. MID TERM WRITTEN ASSESSMENT

Week 6 1. 2. 3. Amy Foster: critical reading.

Week 7 1. Nadine Gordimer’s modern migrations 2. Inside Out Migrations: The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer 3. The Pickup: Dislocation, religion, and communication

Week 8 1. 2. 3. The Pickup: critical reading.

ATTENDANCE POLICY: Attendance is mandatory for all classes. If a student misses more than three classes, 2 percentage points will be deducted from the final grade for every additional absence. Any exams, tests, presentations, or other work missed due to student absences can only be rescheduled in cases of documented medical emergencies or family emergencies.

REQUIRED READINGS:

 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 1-20.  Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 173-183.  Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language”, in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 428-434.  Douglas Kerr, “Conrad and the Immigrant: The Drama of Hospitality”, Review of English Studies 67 (279), 2016, pp. 334-348.  Elleke Boehmer, “The writing of ‘not quite’ and ‘in between’”, in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Oxford, OUP, 2005, pp. 225-236.  Franz Meier, "Picking up the Other: Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup", EESE 2/2003, http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic23/franz/2_2003.html  Ileana Dimitriu, 2003, “The End of History: Reading Gordimer’s Post-Apartheid Novels”, Current Writing, 15, 1, pp. 17-37.  J. M. Coetzee, “Nadine Gordimer”, in Inner Workings. Literary Essays 2000-2005, London, Harvill Secker, 2007.  Joseph Conrad, “Author’s Note”, Almayer’s Folly, London, Wordsworth Classics, 2011, pp. 5-6.  Joseph Conrad, “Amy Foster”  Katherine Isobel Baxter, “‘Senseless speech’ and inaudibility in Conrad’s ‘Amy Foster’: rethinking trauma and the unspeakable in fiction”, Textual Practice, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2015.1084364  Krystyna U. Golkowska, “Empathy and Othering in Joseph Conrad’s Amy Foster”, AWEJ, Special Issue on Literature No. 2 October, 2014, 60-68.  Masoud Farahmandfar, "Picking Up an Identity: A Postcolonial Reading of Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup", International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies, 2 (2), April 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.35  Nadine Gordimer, “Writing and Being”, in Living in Hope and History, London, Bloomsbury, 1999, pp. 195-206.  Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup, London, Bloomsbury, 2001.  Nurten Birlik, “Two Cases of Marginalization told from the Wings: “Amy Foster” and Swept from the Sea”, Trames, 2009, 13 (63/58), 1, 83–91.  Peter Childs and Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory, London, Harvester, 1997, pp. 1-25.  Richard Ambrosini, Reconceptualizing Conrad as a Transnational Novelist: A Research Programme, Studia Neophilologica 2012, DOI:10.1080/00393274.2012.751662, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2012.751662  Stephen Clingman, "Village, Empire, the Desert", in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 230-239.  Stephen Clingman, “Introduction. The Grammar of Identity”, in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 1-34.  Stephen Clingman, “Waterways of the Earth: Joseph Conrad”, in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 35-48.  Tania Zulli, “Stepping across which line? Geographical and intellectual dislocations in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, Forms of Migration-Migration of Forms, Vittoria Intonti, Federica Troisi e Marina Vitale (a cura di), Bari, Progedit, 2009, pp. 238-246.  Tania Zulli, ““The desert is mute”: Spatial and Linguistic Extremes in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, ed. Nicoletta Brazzelli and Frédéric Regard, Textus XXIX – 2 (May-August 2016), pp. 155-168.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

 Emma Hunt, “Post-Apartheid Johannesburg and Global Mobility in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow”, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 37, 4, 2006, pp. 103-121.  Eve M. Whittaker, “Amy Foster and the Blindfolded Woman”, Conradiana, Volume 39, Number 3, Fall 2007, pp. 249-272.  Hugh Epstein, “Where he is not Wanted”: Impression and Articulation in “The Idiots” and “Amy Foster”, Conradiana, 23.3, pp. 217-232.  Nadine Gordimer, Living in Hope and History, London, Bloomsbury, 1999.  Edward Said, Orientalism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1995.  Nico Israel, Outlandish: Writing Between Exile and Diaspora, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 2000.  Ruth A.H., Lathi “The Essential Gesture as Transnational Gesture in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, Current Writing, 25, 1, 2013, pp. 39-51.  Sue Kossew, “Beyond the National: Exile and Belonging in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, Scrutiny 28, 1, 2003, pp. 21-6.

AUDIOS AND VIDEOS:

 http://www.livinglanguage.com/blog/2016/03/01/reflections-on-language-from-in-other-words- by-jhumpa-lahiri/  http://lithub.com/jhumpa-lahiri-on-language-and-the-longing-for-home/  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/31/jhumpa-lahiri-in-other-words-italian-language

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: Tania Zulli is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature (s.s.d. L-LIN 10) at the University of Rome 3. Her research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth-century colonial literature, with specific reference to British Imperialism. Another field of research is that of Anglophone Postcolonial culture and literature, with a specific focus on South Africa. She has authored a number of essays on these topics, which have been published on national and international journals. Among her most recent books: Nadine Gordimer. Strategie narrative di una transizione politica (Liguori 2005); (ed.) She. Explorations into a Romance (Aracne 2009) Colonial Transitions. Literature and Culture in the Late Victorian Age (Peter Lang 2011), Come leggere “A Passage to India” (Solfanelli 2014), (ed.) E. M. Forster Revisited (2015). At the moment, she is working on the Italian translation of “Amy Foster”, to be published by Marsilio Editore.

Roma, 06/03/2018 Prof. Tania Zulli