ENGL 5139-001: Global Literature and Culture, Post/Colonial Fictions of Development (Spring 2019)

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 19:50:08 +0000

ENGL 5139-001: Global Literature and Culture, Post/Colonial Fictions of Development (Spring 2019) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/04/2018 - 13:50

Professor Janice Ho

“Development”—and its myriad cognates, including “underdevelopment,” “uneven development,” “developing nations,” “human development index” and so forth—has been the central paradigm framing colonial and postcolonial geopolitical and economic structures over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The aim of this graduate course is twofold: first, we will trace the history and evolution of the term “development”; its historical impact on colonial, postcolonial, and international forms of governance; and its imbrication with other political discourses like human rights and gender equality. Second, the course will read twentieth- and twenty-first century colonial, postcolonial, and world Anglophone fiction to see how various novelistic forms, especially the Bildungsroman—the quintessential narrative of development—adapt themselves to different socio-historical conditions of development and intervene in broader political debates. The reading list is still in flux, but will likely include theorists such as: Arturo Escobar, James Ferguson, Amartya Sen, Giovanni Arrighi, and David Harvey. We may also look at a range of primary materials, including government documents on colonial development and World Bank and IMF reports. Authors we may read include: Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief, Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day, or Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable from the first half of the century; and Ngugi Wa Thiong’O’s Petals of Blood, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions; Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place; Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness; Chris Abani’s GraceLand, or Zadie Smith’s NW from the second half of the century.

MA-Lit Course Designation: Literature After 1800, Multicultural/Postcolonial Literature, C (Bodies/Identities/Collectivities), D (Cultures/Politics/Histories)

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ENGL 5139-001: Global Literature and Culture, The Global Eighteenth

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 21:00:52 +0000

ENGL 5139-001: Global Literature and Culture, The Global Eighteenth Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/16/2018 - 15:00

Professor Catherine Labio

This course focuses on the role played by the intersection of commerce and culture in the creation of a global imaginary in the long eighteenth century. In particular, we shall study the feedback loop that obtained between financial capitalism and joint-stock companies like the South Sea, Mississippi, and East India Companies on the one hand and the worldwide movements of people, things, and discursive and visual practices on the other.

We shall analyze a broad range of texts and objects, including prose narratives, poems, plays, essays, letters, paintings, prints, places, and things associated with movements of people and goods within Britain and between Britain, other European powers, the Ottoman Empire, the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean, India, China, and the South Pacific.

Sub-topics include:

The role played by trading and joint-stock companies in turning the British and European eighteenth century into a global era marked by European expansion and multi-directional encounters;
The construction of Britishness through competition with other European powers in and outside Europe;
The ever increasing role played by colonialism and the enslavement of people in the creation of Britain’s self-definition as a free, polite, and
commercial people;
The impact of globalization on taste, aesthetics, and the culture of sensibility and sentiment;
The gendering of the economy, credit, and colonial power;
Proto-environmental concerns in depictions of the natural world and domesticated landscapes;
Economic thought and moral sentiments;
The founding of New Orleans in 1718;
Globalism versus universalism (or global commerce and universal rights);
The respective roles of texts and images.

Works by such authors and artists as Aphra Behn, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Maria Sibylla Merian, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Mary Wortley Montagu, Abbé Prévost, Jonathan Swift, Bernard Mandeville, Montesquieu, William Hogarth, Mirza Sheikh I’tsesamuddin, Denis Diderot, Maria Edgeworth, Anna Seward, Ignatius Sancho, George Robertson, James Gillray, William Blake, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.

If you would like to see an advance copy of the syllabus or have questions about the course, feel free to contact Professor Labio at labio@colorado.edu.

MA-Lit Course Designation: D (Cultures/Politics/Histories), Literature Before 1800

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