Syllabus

A syllabus is like a constitution: it provides the foundation a direction for the course, but it is always subject to change if it does not meet our needs as the course evolves. As I am always reading and discovering more on my own, I may introduce brief readings if they seem important to our discussion. I will not make any major changes without adequate notice and the consent of the whole class.

** These readings are on reserve. To save time, I suggest you photocopy them all ahead of time.

WEEK 1	Introduction
Monday	8/30	Welcome, technicalities, and "what is world literature, anyway?" An essay on the problems with the phrase "commonwealth literature"
Wednesday	9/1	Heart of Darkness
Friday	9/3	Chinua Achebe, 'An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness'; Candice Bradley**, "Africa and Africans in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (not currently available)

WEEK 2	Africa writes back
Monday	11/8	Achebe, Things Fall Apart How is the African community in this novel different from what Conrad described in Heart of Darkness? What is that holds together the Igbo culture in this novel? What do you think is Achebe's attitude toward that culture? Recommended: "Things Fall Apart Study guide" (http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~brians/anglophone/achebe.html)
Wednesday	11/10	Achebe, Things Fall Apart Why does he wait until past the middle of the novel to introduce the novel's real problem? How is language important to the Igbo? How is the use of language important to our understanding of the encounter between the Igbo and the Europeans? (You might want to consider the novel's conclusion.)
Friday	11/12	Achebe, Things Fall Apart

WEEK 3	Writing the empire, writing the nation
Monday	9/6	LABOR DAY - NO CLASS
Wednesday	9/8	Ngugi wa Thiongo, "The Language of African Literature," "The Language of African Fiction" **
Friday	9/10	Achebe, "The African Writer and the English Language" ** Compare Achebe's argument with Ngugi''s. Which argument do you find more compelling, and why? Mikhail Bakhtin, from The Dialogic Imagination ** According to Bakhtin, what makes the novel distinctive from other genres of literature? Do you see "heteroglossia" operating in either of the novels we have looked at so far?

WEEK 4
Monday	9/13	Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Compare the values associated with the homestead and the mission? What images or objects does Dangarembga use to help us in that comparison? Do you think Dangarembga prefers one world or the other? Confused by the Shona names and titles? Try this guide. Some helpful historical background for Nervous Conditions.
Wednesday	9/15	Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Looking back now at Things Fall Apart* from the vantage point of this later novel, what can you say about Achebe's attitude toward the women in his novel?*
Friday	9/17	Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Tambu's mother tells her, "What will help you, my child, is to learn to carry your burdens with strength" (16). But on her way to the Mission, Tambu reflects that there is "no burden so binding that it could not be dropped" (58). Again, when she goes on to the convent, she justifies her decision as "a chance to lighten those burdens by entering a world where burdens were light" (179). Consider the importance of "burdens" of all kinds in this novel and the attitudes of the different characters toward their respective burdens.

WEEK 5	Double jeopardy and the African woman
Monday	9/20	Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Much of this novel is about the effect of cultural change on the lives of African women. What are the effects of cultural change on lifestyle, status, and identity of the African man?
Wednesday	9/22	Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions Having finished the novel, look back at the first paragraph with its promise of hope: "my story is not after all about death, but about my escape and Lucia's; about my mother's and Maiguru's entrapment; and about Nyasha's rebellion -- Nyasha, far-minded and isolated, my uncle's daughter, whose rebellion may not in the end have been successful." In what sense do Lucia and Tambu escape the entrapment of their mothers? In what sense is that escape incomplete? Is that escape wholly positive? Remember that the term "escape" can have negative connotations as well if it means running away from responsibility.
Friday	9/24	Benedict Anderson, from Imagined Communities ** What does the novel (as a genre, or type of literature) have to do with the evolution of Europe and the nations that make up Europe? To take the idea beyond where Anderson takes it, why might the history of the novel make it troublesome as a way of exploring African or Indian identity?

WEEK 6	The Creole experience Intertextuality: retelling old stories (with a difference)
Monday	9/27	Short paper due date #1: Conrad, Achebe, Dangarembga Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Part I In what ways are the world of this novel and the experience of its characters similar to and/or different from those we have seen so far this semester? How are the differences reflected in the writing?
Wednesday	9/29	Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea Part II Selections from Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (included in WSS 119-132) How does an understanding of Jane Eyre alter our reading of WSS and vice versa? Is it necessary to know JE in order to understand what Rhys is doing in WSS?
Friday	10/1	Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism"**

WEEK 7
Monday	10/4	Elleke Boehmer, from Colonial and Postcolonial Literature How does Boehmer's view of writing go beyond the more familiar notion of writing as a way of simply recording* lived experience? Why is writing so important?*
Wednesday	10/6	Short paper due date #2: Kincaid / Rhys
Friday	10/8	Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education Salman Rushdie, "Imaginary Homelands,"

WEEK 8	Literature of Exile - Indian Short Fiction (all readings on reserve)
Monday	10/11	R. K. Narayan, "Fellow-Feeling" Githa Hariharan, "The Remains of the Feast"	R.K. Narayan
Wednesday	10/13	Rohintron Mistry, "Swimming Lessons" Shashi Deshpande, "Ghosts"
Friday	10/15	Mahasweti Devi, "Breast-Giver" Sara Suleri, "Meatless Days" What does it mean in these stories to be Indian and to be a woman? You might also consider the Hariharan story from Wednesday. Are there lessons we can draw from earlier writers like Kincaid or Dangarembga?

WEEK 9	Poetry - India (all readings on reserve)
Monday	11/1	Short paper due date #3: Rushdie, Indian short fiction Reading: The mystical tradition: Sri Aurobindo, Rabindrath Tagore, from Gitanjali Verses, The Fugitive Look for different layers of meaning in these poems. In what ways do they seem unusual for religious poetry?
Wednesday	11/3	Tagore, "The Child"; Nissim Ezekiel, "Case Study," "A Time to Change," "Declaration," "Encounter," "Two Nights of Love," "Background, Casually" "Enterprise"
Friday	11/5	After Independence: Kamala Das, "An Introduction," "The Looking Glass"; Eunice de Souza,"Catholic Mother," "Return"; Jayanta Mahapatra, "The Abandoned British Cemetery at Balasore," "Dawn at Puri," "Indian Summer Poem," "Hunger," from The Twentyfifth Anniversary of a Republic, "Two" What common themes, ideas, or attitudes, do you find in these poems? What distinctive differences do you find between the different poets? None of these poems is explicitly nationalistic, even those written around the time of independence: what do we make of that fact?

WEEK 10
Monday	10/18	Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children This novel is about children born at the moment India achieved independence from England. In what ways does this make it a historical novel? How does the history Rushdie talks about contribute to the fiction he is telling? What does the fiction bring to the history? Read about the Jalian Wala Bagh massacre described in the "Mercurochrome" chapter. More links to information about Salman Rushdie
Wednesday	10/20
Friday	10/22

WEEK 11
Monday	10/18	Rushdie, "'Errata' or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children" Rushdie, "The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987"
Wednesday		Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children Why does Rushdie introduce Padma? How does her presence affect the way we relate to the novel?
Friday

WEEK 12
Monday	10/18	Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children Why does Rushdie describe his chapters as "pickle jars"? What does this suggest about the narrator's and/or Rushdie's conception of story and/or history?
Wednesday		Names: Why are names so important to this narrator? (look, for example, at pages 264-5, where Saleem explores his own name).
Friday

WEEK 13	Poetry of Africa (all readings on reserve)
Monday	11/22	African poetry I: Leopold Senghor and the "Negritude Movement"
Wednesday	11/24	THANKSGIVING BREAK

WEEK 14
Monday		South Africa: Dennis Brutus
Wednesday	12/2	Special guest: Dennis Brutus
Friday	12/4	Nigeria: Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo
		Due Friday: Research paper draft

WEEK 15	Independent reading, writing; in-class progress reports
Monday	12/7
Wednesday	12/9
Friday	12/11

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This page is maintained by Don Ulin
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Syllabus

WEEK 1

Introduction

WEEK 2

Africa writes back

WEEK 3

Writing the empire, writing the nation

WEEK 4

WEEK 5

Double jeopardy and the African woman

WEEK 6

The Creole experience Intertextuality: retelling old stories (with a difference)

WEEK 7

WEEK 8

Literature of Exile - Indian Short Fiction (all readings on reserve)

WEEK 9

Poetry - India (all readings on reserve)

WEEK 10

WEEK 11

WEEK 12

WEEK 13

Poetry of Africa (all readings on reserve)

WEEK 14

WEEK 15

Independent reading, writing; in-class progress reports

The Creole experience
Intertextuality: retelling old stories (with a difference)

Literature of Exile - Indian Short Fiction
(all readings on reserve)

Poetry - India
(all readings on reserve)

Poetry of Africa
(all readings on reserve)

Independent reading, writing;
in-class progress reports