300256 Postcolonial Studies: Perspectives from Asia (S) (WiSe 2016/2017)

The course offers a study of contemporary texts including literature, film and other forms of popular culture that engage the implications of living in a postcolonial world, with a particular focus on South Asia. We will begin by raising some of the theoretical questions that have plagued postcolonial scholarship since its inception. We will then explore a variety of culturally specific texts that complicate our understanding of these broad questions. Each text will be carefully situated in its historical, political, ideological, and socio-economic contexts. The students will be offered a range of critical tools, concepts, and theoretical frameworks with which to negotiate the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, culture and power under the circumstances peculiar to colonialism, postcolonialism, imperialism and globalization.

Course Objectives
• Introduce students to critical terms, major currents, approaches and theoretical concepts of colonialism and postcolonialism
• Highlight intersections between a variety of discourses of identity, including discourses of gender, sexuality, class, race, religion, colonialism, and nationality
• Learning to apply postcolonial analytical tools at cultural, social and textual levels.
• Develop your analytical skills of close reading and critical thinking
• Give you the opportunity to improve your writing skills, by offering guidance on writing clear, well-argued, and well-supported essays
• Challenge you to learn about different ways of thinking, doing and living in the world and revisit some of your own ways of thinking and doing.

Outline
1. Introduction to Colonialism, Post colonialism, Post-colonial Theory and Literature.
2. Building Lexical Resource in Postcolonial Studies.
3. Post-colonial Theory: Edward Said, Homi.k.Bhaba and Gayatri C. Spivak
4. Postcolonial Configurations: Gender, Race & Culture (Including Film & Media from Indo-Pak).
5. Postcolonial Literature (Poetry, Prose & Drama from Indo-Pak).
6. Post-colonial Ingenious Research Paradigms.
7. De-provincializing Sociology: Relevance of Post colonialism in Sociology.
8. Neo-Colonialism & Globalization in Asia.

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts. 3rd ed. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2005.
Chilisa, B. (2011). Indigenous research methodologies. Sage Publications.