Debating Global Literary Culture, 1800 to the Present - ENG00027M
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2025-26 |
Module aims
The module helps students to navigate canonical postcolonial texts, and to respond to these texts in a critically informed fashion. Students are expected to raise questions about the processes and legacies of empire, especially in relation to literary history. They are invited to link these issues to widespread and well-known theoretical concerns with identity politics, equality claims and human rights. If postcolonial studies worked to ensure that the resistant force of populations working against empire was recognized as globally significant, this module will help tie such recognition to contemporary debates about political resistance to capitalism, ecological degradation and disaster and the circulation of literary and cultural texts in English. Across the module, key theoretical texts and literary examples are connected to cultural texts more broadly and political debates. Students can follow up on debates in class in small, peer-led discussion groups, through the suggested set of linked films, and via the wide range of related talks that the Department of English and partner departments offer. This will be a challenging, theoretically investigative and lively module ensuring that students get off to a global start to the MA.
Module learning outcomes
Students will achieve a substantial grounding in:
- Postcolonial, global and world literature debates
- Literary focus as well as interdisciplinary range
- Historical coverage and timely contemporary debates
- Independence, identity, equality and rights
- Literary analysis of the global economy, ecocriticism and resource fictions
- The global commodification of literature and the worlding of the English language
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
You will receive feedback on all assessed work within the University deadline, and will often receive it more quickly. The purpose of feedback is to inform your future work; it is designed to help you to improve your work, and the Department also offers you help in learning from your feedback. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further you can discuss it with your module tutor, the MA Convenor or your supervisor, during their Consultation & Feedback Hours.
Indicative reading
Indicative list:
Appadurai, Arjun, ed., Globalization (2003)
Ashcroft, Bill and Griffiths, Gareth, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (2013)
Boehmer, Elleke, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors (2005)
Casanova, Pascale, The World Republic of Letters (2004)
Cazdyn, Eric and Szeman, Imre, After Globalization (2011)
Damrosch, David, What is World Literature? (2003)
Damrosch, D avid, How to Read World Literature (2008)
Connell, Liam and Marsh, Nicky, Literature and Globalization: A Reader (2011)
Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (1963)
Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott and Robertson, Roland, Global Modernities (1995)
Gupta, Suman, Globalization and Literature (2009)
Huggan, Graham, The Postcolonial Exotic (2001)
Jameson, Fredric and Miyoshi, Masao, The Cultures of Globalization (1998)
Jay, Paul, Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies (2010)
Neil Lazarus, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies
Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism
Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory
Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader