Empire: Fiction & Theory
This seminar will be taught in the fall of 2005, Wednesdays 1-4pm, by Professor Deepika Bahri of the English Department, and will complement the two seminars previously announced ("Globalization Practicum" and "Empires Past and Present").
Eng 789R: Empire: Fiction and Theory
Professor Deepika Bahri, Department of English; W 1:00-4:00pm
Content: How does the work of empire begin? What are its tools, its theories, and its fictions? Does empire create nervous conditions among the natives? When the empire writes back, what are its major concerns, its favored genres, its aesthetic forms? This course will survey major works in the literature of empire, investigating the following topics: nation, race, gender, trauma, hybridity, and subalternity. Students can also expect discussions on definitions of postcoloniality, the rise of postcolonial studies in the context of economic and cultural globalization, the operation of neo-colonial maneuvers in both spheres, and the intersection of postcolonial discourse with feminism, marxism, and psychoanalytic studies.