Summer Semester 2008 - Details

 

English 479/579: Post Colonial Literature
English 487/587: Genre—English Theatre History

English 487/587: Post Colonial Literature

Once the center of the British Empire and the arch center itself, the metropolitan city of London has been taken over by the margins. The city is now the home of several Sub-Contentental Indian-Pakistani populations, Africans and Carribeans. Our London semester will focus on the diverse population of London and show the cousinship of experience of immigration, writing in a language not one's own, adapting to foreign ways of being and creating something new from all of the melee. This course will take a historical approach to the development of postcolonial and Black British literature in London. We will begin our study of postcoloniality with Alice in Wonderland as beginning to express early feelings of postcoloniality. We will read Kipling's Kim, Sam Selvon's Lonely Londoners, a Caribbean novel of the Windrush generation, and work our way up including such works as Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen (set in Chalk Farm) to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, Hanif Kureishi's Black Album and Zadie Smith's White Teeth.

We will use the city itself as a research resource, touring Southall, Brick Lane, Wimbledon and Willisden Green, and taking Mrs. Dalloway's walk through Kew Gardens. We will explore the library sources in the British Library and the School for Oriental and African Studies Library. We will have the opportunity to meet some of the writer's we study, and talk to lecturers in British universities such as Susiela Nasta, a specialist on Sam Selvon and the writer Aamer Hussein.

English 487/587 Genre: English Theatre History

This class will read English drama extensively in class, and then take in live theatre performances all around London from the West End to the experimental fringe theatres.