EWL 215 Reading the British Empire: Racism, Whiteness, and English Literature
In this course, students will read British literary classics from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to understand how these well-known texts popularized racist beliefs about non-European cultures, and disseminated an idealized concept of whiteness that continues to be replicated today (through Hollywood adaptations, TV series, fashion trends, and more). Students will also look at how the very idea of studying English literature as an academic subject was tied to the project of colonization. The course will introduce a number of useful conceptual tools developed by anti-colonial thinkers, with the goal of helping students identify and resist racist colonial narratives and develop new ways of reading for the twenty-first century.