Department of English

This course charts India’s trajectory from colony to nation through the genre of the Anglophone Indian novel. The genre of the novel was introduced to India through the encounter with colonial modernity. Since 1864, when the first Indian English novel was written, the genre in its bourgeois European form has undergone key transformations, adapted to the Indian context to address themes of empire, anticolonialism, nationalism, and postcolonial identity. By focusing on canonical texts that may include Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, this course will introduce students to the modern history and literary culture of the region, and reflect on the place and politics of English as a South Asian language. Drawing on historical and critical texts where necessary, as well as film and other literary genres, the course will examine how the English novel has explored the fraught issues of caste, class, gender, citizenship and culture in the Indian postcolony.

Assignments include class participation, book review, and a final paper.