EWL 359 The Empire Writes Back: Contemporary Anticolonial Fiction
In this course, students will read contemporary fiction from parts of the world once colonized by the British Empire (including present-day Antigua, India, Jamaica, Kenia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the U.S.), to understand how anti-colonial authors use literature for resisting white supremacist narratives, and for reimagining their histories, communities, and identities on their own terms. The course will pay particular attention to the question of language: why and how do writers choose (or refuse) to use the colonizer’s language—English? Students will also look at (neo)colonial patterns in modern literary publishing, marketing, and book design, and examine the ways in which colonial history continues to shape the way we read and write in the twenty-first century. (All texts will be read in English.)