Unit name | Postcolonial Literature |
---|---|
Unit code | ENGL21012 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Gareth Griffith |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of English |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit will introduce students to something of the range, depth, and continuing development of postcolonial writing in the past fifty years. There will be opportunities to read fiction, non-fiction prose and poetry, and to consider recent and current postcolonial theory and criticism.
Aims:
This unit will aim to give students a broad introduction to postcolonial writing drawn from the last fifty years. Students will be asked to read a range of creative, critical, and theoretical works, and to place them in a wider historical context. Through this work, students will also have an opportunity to consider broader developments in contemporary writing.
Students will have had opportunities to read a wide range of works taken from across the past fifty years, which illustrate various aspects of postcolonial creative and critical writing or thought. Students will have been encouraged to place these works in the context of contemporary writing more widely and in their historical context.
The unit will normally be taught in ten three-hour seminars, which will utilise a range of teaching methods including lectures by the tutor(s), formal and informal presentations by students, and small group discussion.
Students will be required to undertake two assignments. The first will be a formative presentation of approximately 10 minutes, in which students will be asked to engage with a particular text or a topic with a relatively defined scope. The second will be a summative essay of 2,800 to 4,000 words and will normally involve a wider range of texts and/or approaches to postcolonial literature. The unit mark will comprise the mark for the summative essay.