Module ENGL3991: Postcolonial and Decolonising Theory and Criticism

Department: English Studies

ENGL3991: Postcolonial and Decolonising Theory and Criticism

Prerequisites

• None. Recommended to have taken ENGL2011 Theory & Practice of Literary Criticism and/or ENGL2801 Postcolonial and World Literatures.

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• Focused study of selected postcolonial and decolonising criticism and theory, beginning with anti-colonialism and the period of formal decolonising from European colonialism, and critical theory which brought the spirit and questions of decolonising and related social movements of resistance into the academy.
• To develop students’ thinking about the relationship that specific experiences of colonialism have to literature and culture and the critical frameworks and theories which emerge from them.
• To consider criticism that examines the afterlife and legacies of colonialism within culture more broadly, as well as in the re-forming and development of the academic humanities.
• To study some foundational critical texts as well as particular pathways that have formed in resistance to coloniality, within and beyond postcolonial studies.
• To pay attention to how race and gender are conceptualised in colonialism and projects of decolonising.
• To offer pathways focused on areas of contemporary critical interest, which could for example include: postcolonial medical humanities or postcolonial environmental humanities, or current ways of reckoning with history and culture, amongst others.

Content

• Begins with a focus on foundational anticolonial and decolonising critical authors actively involved in anticolonial and decolonising movements such as Aimé Césaire, Franz Fanon, and Ngugi wa Thiong’O.
• Includes the development of postcolonial critical theory within the academy, drawing on works by authors engaged in anticolonial and/or post-independence activism, such as Edward W. Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot.
• Offers contemporary critical pathways by reading works that may pertain to postcolonial medical humanities, postcolonial environmental humanities, and current forms of reckoning with historical, cultural, and political legacies of colonialism and its afterlives.

Learning Outcomes

• Familiarity with theory and criticism pertaining to anti-colonialism, decolonising, post-colonialism.
• Familiarity with the historical contexts and cultural change for the theory and criticism studied.
• Understanding the changing nature of the module’s central terminology and its relation to social and cultural contexts.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• Critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts.
• An ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches.
• Informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts.
• Sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language.
• An ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature.
• An ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies.
• Skills of effective communication and argument.
• Awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation.
• Command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology.
• Awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• A capacity to analyse critically.
• An ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject.
• Competence in the planning and execution of assessed work.
• A capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others.
• Skills in critical reasoning.
• An ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner.
• Information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information.
• Organisation and time-management skills.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology.
• Students to maintain, as part of ongoing collaborative pedagogy and formative assessment, an accessible online journal of discussion questions emerging from reading for each seminar, encouraging independent critical reflection and peer assessment.
• Students to, as part of ongoing collaborative pedagogy and formative assessment, co-lead a seminar with their own prepared discussion questions, collaborating with co-leaders to choose what to approach.
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor.  This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Prepare for and co-lead one seminar’s initial questions (30 mins). Maintain an online journal of three questions for the seminar group, for each seminar. Discursive peer assessment in-seminar.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.