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Debating Global Literary Culture, 1800 to the Present - ENG00027M

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  • Department: English and Related Literature
  • Module co-ordinator: Information currently unavailable
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: M
  • Academic year of delivery: 2023-24

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 1 2023-24

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

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
4,500 word essay		 N/A 100

Special assessment rules

None

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Essay/coursework
4,500 word essay		 N/A 100

Module feedback

For more information about the feedback you will receive for your work, see section 12 of the department's Guide to Assessment (PDF , 1,244kb).

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


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.