ENLT 339 Post/Colonial Lives Lit & Film

Arts & Letters Literature. Cultural Diversity.
This course will focus on lived experiences of
conflict, trauma, and resistance within
colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial spaces-and the
role of literary, cinematic, and cultural texts in
bearing witness-in different parts of the world.
We will examine key conversations and debates on
colonization and decolonization; orientalism;
globalization and neo-colonialism; race, gender,
and class struggles; and generational trauma and
memory across a wide variety of literary, visual,
and oral genres/media. Selected course texts will
include Aimé Cesaire's A Tempest (a postcolonial
adaptation of Shakespeare's tragicomedy The
Tempest); Toufic El Rassi's Arab in America (a
comic book about the author's hyphenated identity
and growing up experiences in pre- and post-9/11
U.S.); Basharat Peer's Curfewed Night (a memoir
that chronicles conflict in Kashmir, one of the
most militarized regions in the world); spoken
word poems that challenge Orientalist stereotypes
about non-Western women as exotic and/or
oppressed; and critically acclaimed films, such as
Maquilapolis and Trick or Treaty, which document
Indigenous communities' experience of and
resistance to globalization and settler
colonialism. This course will include both
analytical and reflective components that will
foster critical thinking skills and encourage
students to make self-reflexive connections
between the multiple "worlds" that are depicted in
the course texts and students' own locations and
experiences.

Credits

3

Prerequisite

Take CORE-110 or HNR-150 or an OC, Oral Communication, course previously or concurrently.

Distribution

LIT,CD

Offered

Annual Fall or Spring Semester