Module description
This module is designed to introduce you to a selection of contemporary Anglophone South Asian women's texts viewed through the lens of postcolonial feminist theory. The course focuses on the new wave of Anglophone women writers of South Asian origin that has emerged to great acclaim within the last decade, including Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and Jhumpa Lahiri. The module is structured around four inter-related, themed sections. It explores a selection of contemporary texts in relation to ways in which gender inflects representations of national identity and history, the relationship of women to postcolonial politics, violence, and war, alongside gendered perspectives of migration, identity, displacement in an increasing global context. Reading these feminist fictions in relation to the historical and theoretical debates of postcolonial feminist studies, we will consider the legacies of colonialism for women; the burden of home and family for women; the patriarchal underpinnings of nations and religious, ethnic or caste-based communities; the communalising of women's sexuality in South Asia and traumas of rape; the problematics of subalternity and representation; and issues of agency, subjectivity and the formulation of a politics of resistance in these contemporary women writers counter-narratives to patriarchal discourses and to dominant configurations of the relationship between nation, gender and sexuality.
Assessment details
1 x 4000 word essay
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to develop student's knowledge and understanding of the following: - The key thematic concern s, genres, forms and aesthetic qualities of contemporary South Asian Anglophone contemporary women's writing and its relation to postcolonial writing, contemporary and feminist fiction and theory. - The fictional representation of the multiple patriarchies that determine and shape South Asian women's lives in diverse colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic situations in the chosen texts. - The South Asian historical, political and cultural and other contexts within which such work is both produced and analysed, particularly twentieth - century discourses of the subcontinent's distinct nationalisms. - The methodological diversity used in theorising postcolonial literature and postcolonial feminism. - The range of theoretical and critical writings by predominantly South Asian feminists and their interrogation of Anglo - American feminism. - Questions of multiple and multi - layered audiences, the position of the reader in the Western academy consuming 'Third World women's texts'. - The course aims to enable the student to evaluate the selected literary texts in conjunction with the critical material, the postcolonial and feminist theoretical issues we will be discussing throughout.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, the students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practicable skills appropriate to a Level 7 module and in particular will be able to demonstrate detailed knowledge and understanding in the following areas:
- The students will have demonstrated the ability to situate these texts in their cultural, historical and political context in especially twentieth-century discourses of the subcontinent's distinct nationalisms.
- They will have demonstrated critical understanding of how gender inflects representations of racial and national identity, postcolonial politics, violence and war, alongside gendered perspectives of migration, identity, and gendered ethnicities.
- They will have demonstrated familiarity with various narrative strategies used by the chosen writers to formulation a politics of resistance to persistent forms of patriarchy in diverse colonial, postcolonial, and diasporic situations, alongside an understanding of the way this body of fiction straddles postcolonial writing, contemporary literature and women's writing and redefines both postcolonial and feminist studies.
- They will be able to demonstrate detailed knowledge of key elements of postcolonial theory, postcolonial feminist theory and its critique of Anglo - American feminism) and the relationship between these two.
Teaching pattern
1 x 2 hour seminar, weekly