Department of English

In this lecture-discussion class we will study a series of thematically connected novels by some of the twentieth-century’s most important writers, both from Britain and the global south.  Class discussions will critically examine the following oppositions: “Englishness” (or “Frenchness”) and otherness, civilization and barbarism, power and knowledge, the metropolis and the periphery, and writing and orality. The course will appeal to students with an interest in questions of race and gender and the relationship between literature and politics, as well as students who simply want to read a set of compelling books and expand their literary horizons. Books are likely to include: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; E.M. Forster, Passage to India; Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief; Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing; Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea; Graham Greene, The Quiet American; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart or Arrow of God; Sembene Ousmane, God’s Bits of Wood; J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians; Kazuo Ishiguru, The Remains of the Day; and Salman Rushdie, Shame or East/West. Films will include: The Battle of Algiers, Black and White in Color, and Sugar Cane Alley. Students will also be encouraged to see the film versions of the novels included in the course. Writing requirements: a mid-term and final paper of around 8-10 pages in length.