Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Study of primarily 20th- and 21st-century literatures and cultures in a comparative transnational framework. Focus may be hemispheric American literatures, the literatures of ‘the global south’, historical colonial and/or contemporary postcolonial/decolonial literatures, global environmental literature, and contemporary avant garde poetry and poetics. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught.

COURSE DETAILS:

Entangled Empires and Minor Transnationalism

We live in a time of aporia, where globalization and polarization go hand in hand. How can such a contemporary phenomenon be understood and explained through the violent history of entangled empires across the world? How can minor transnationalism—ways of forming lateral relationships among subjects of the "global south”—provide a way out?

In this course, we will examine key texts in postcolonial and decolonial studies that invite us think through how injustice and resistance in a particular space always need to be situated in a global context. We will read works of academic scholarship and cultural production (namely, novels, poetry, non-fictional creative writing, and films). Our goal is two-fold. First, we will investigate the inter-connectedness among European colonialisms in Africa, racism in North America, militarization in the Pacific, and imperial wars in Asia. Second, we will examine how often-ignored lateral relationships can offer decolonial ways of imagining encounters, differences, alternative modernity, gender and sexual equality, and environmental justice.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Please acquire the required reading on your own. They are available at the SFU Bookstore for purchase. All critical essays, short excerpts, and films will be available through Canvas.

 

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: