English - Elective Subject, topic 3: Postcolonial Studies in the 21st Century: Four Stories, Four Themes

Where is postcolonialism heading in the 21^st century? What themes are (still) relevant? What (new) stories are told, and how are they told? In what ways do these themes and stories engage with the past – and the present? In this course we will respond to such broad queries by studying four central postcolonial themes and stories through close readings of seven recent novels (and a few classic texts) which we will study in comparative pairs under the rubrics of ‘Orientalism Revisited – Writing Back, Pointing Forwards’, ‘Race, Gender and Identities – Current Complexities’, ‘Subaltern London – Poverty and Protests’, and ‘A Changing Europe – New Migrant Trajectories’. This course will give you a chance to understand what postcolonial studies is (and was) and where it is going – and, not least, why it is still relevant in the 21^st century.