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Purpose
 This seminar focuses on British novels and novellas spanning the twentieth century that concern Britain’s history of colonial rule and its aftermath. The course will privilege postcolonial theory as the principal (but not exclusive) prism through which these texts will be analyzed.
Expected Outcomes
By the end of the course you should be able to show a knowledge of some of the principal postcolonial works of British fiction in the twentieth century, understand major theories associated with colonialism/ postcolonialism, understand different ways in which literary theory and secondary sources can be used in the criticism of literary texts, know how to conduct research in twentieth century, British fiction and postcolonial theory, argue convincingly in oral and written form for an interpretation of a text, prepare and write a research paper about a fictional text or texts.
Required Texts
The following texts have been ordered from the university bookstore:
- Forster, E. M. A Passage to India. New York: Harcourt, 1965 reissue.
- Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: MLA, 2003.
- Kucich, John, ed. Fictions of Empire. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
- Naipaul, V.S. The Enigma of Arrival. New York: Vintage, 1988.
- Phillips, Caryl. Cambridge. New York: Vintage, 1993.
- Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Norton, 1992.
- Rushdie, Salman. Shame. New York: Random House, 2008.
The Satanic Verses. New York: Random House, 2008
- Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. New York: Longman, 1989.
- Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. New York: Vintage, 2001.
- Williams Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader.
New York: Columbia UP, 1994.
Course Requirements
BEACHBOARD. This syllabus is available on Beachboard. Grades for your various papers (except for reaction papers) will be posted on Beachboard once they are awarded.
ATTENDANCE. Regular attendance is important and counts towards your grade. If you are unavoidably absent please email me in advance. More than three unexcused absences will lower your course grade by a grade point. More than six unexcused absences could result in a course grade of F. See Makeup and Attendance Policy below.
READING. You are all expected to have read the fictional texts listed in the syllabus before the class concerned.
REACTION PAPERS. You are required to produce a one-page printed reaction paper (MLA style) for nine of the ten fictional texts marked with an asterisk below on the day when each is asterisked. You may be asked to summarize your reaction near the start of the class, and should leave your paper with me at the end of that class. Papers will be graded acceptable (a check), unacceptable (a cross), or exceptional (two checks). Reaction papers will be accepted up to a week late, but will be recorded as late and treated as if they had had a grade point deducted.
ORAL PRESENTATION AND RELATED PAPER. You are required to undertake one oral presentation chosen from those listed in the syllabus. Your oral presentation to the class should last about thirty minutes including questions and answers and should be accompanied by a two-page typed summary (with select bibliography) photocopied for everyone else in the class. You will be graded for this element on the basis of a 5-6 page paper typed in MLA style that you will give me a week after the presentation. This should be an argued paper citing sources concerning a major aspect of the topic of the oral presentation. Late papers will lose a grade point for each week late.
BOOK REPORT. You are expected to select one of the books listed in the syllabus under “BOOK REPORT” and offer the class a succinct summary of its arguments as well as commenting on their effectiveness. Your report should last approximately 15-20 minutes, and your typed report (mainly a summary but also an appraisal of it) should be 2-4 pages long and submitted to me at the end of the same class.
RESEARCH PAPER. In consultation with me you will need to choose a suitable topic related to the syllabus (other than one already covered in your oral paper) for your term research paper by no later than 26 March (and earlier if possible). You will need to clear the topic with me in advance. Your term paper of 12-13 pages must incorporate secondary sources (from books, articles or reliable Web pages) as well as a list of works cited, using MLA style. During the last two weeks you will be asked to present to the seminar group an outline of your proposed final paper. You will need to distribute a two-page summary of it to all members of the seminar. The intention is for everyone else to help you improve your paper by suggestions and constructive criticism.
Grade Point Computation
See the University Catalog: Regulations – Grades and Grading Procedures for definitions of grades A-F.
- Reaction papers, attendance and participation: 25%.
- Oral presentation paper: 25%.
- Book Report: 15%.
- Drafts and outlines for term paper: 5%.
- Term research paper: 30%.
Syllabus
- Jan 27 Introduction. Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: definitions.
- Jan 29 Williams and Chrisman: extracts from Said's Orientalism and critiques of it by Porter and Ahmad (Williams and Chrisman
132-171).
- Feb 3 Rudyard Kipling. "The Man Who Would Be King." (in Fictions of Empire; cf. Sullivan).
- ORAL: A brief history of India under British rule to the end of the nineteenth century and Kipling’s response to British imperialism.
- BOOK REPORT: Parry, Benita. “The Content and Discontents of Kipling’s Imperialism.” New Formations 6 (1988): 45-63.
- Feb 5 Robert Louis Stevenson. "The Beach of Falesa."* (in Fictions of Empire; cf. Linehan).
- ORAL: Report on Senghor, Césaire and the négritude movement.
- BOOK REPORT: Edmond, Ron. Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gaugin. Cambridge UP, 1997 (chap.s 1 & 6).
- Feb 10 Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness.* (in Fictions of Empire; cf. Achebe and Bratlinger).
- ORAL: Conrad’s journey to the Congo, and his outlook on life and colonialism (cf. Karl, Frederick R. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives. Farrar, Straus, 1979; Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, Vol. 1, 1983; Congo Diary, 1978).
- BOOK REPORT: essays by Hawkins, Fothergill and Armstrong in the Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness, 4th ed.
- Feb 12 Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness.
- ORAL: Said’s theories on the connection between fiction and power politics in Culture and Imperialism (with his comments on Kipling and Conrad).
- BOOK REPORT: Collits, Terry. Postcolonial Conrad: Paradoxes of Empire. Routledge, 2005 (introductory chaps and chap on “Heart of Darkness”).
- Feb 17 E.M Forster. A Passage to India.*
- ORAL: Forster’s two visits to India and views on Indians, Anglo-Indians, and British
(Routledge Literary Source Book on A Passage to India, 2002).
- BOOK REPORT: Bailey, Quentin. Heroes and Homosexuals: Education and Empire in E. M. Forster.
Twentieth Century Literature 48.3 (2002): 324-47.
- Feb 19 E.M Forster. A Passage to India.
- ORAL: Postcolonial critics on A Passage to India (4 essays in Childs, Peter, Post-Colonial Theory and English Literature: A Reader, 2000).
- BOOK REPORT: Martin, Robert K, and George Piggford, eds. Queer Forster, U of Chicago P, 1997.
- Feb 24 E.M Forster. A Passage to India. / Sam Selvon. The Lonely Londoners.*
- ORAL: Caribbean immigrant experience in England from the arrival of the Empire Windrush to the West Indian literary renaissance of the 1950s.
- Feb 26 Sam Selvon. The Lonely Londoners.
- BOOK REPORT: Hall and Gilroy in Williams and Chrisman 392-420.
- BOOK REPORT: Wyke, Clement H. Sam Selvon’s Dialectical Style and Fictional Strategy. U of British Columbia P, 1991 (Intro. and chapter 2).
- Mar 3 Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea.*
- ORAL: A history of the slave trade to the Caribbean (cf. Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters. Methuen, 1992: intro and chap on Caribbean encounter).
- BOOK REPORT: Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. 2nd ed.Yale UP, 2000 (chap.s 1,2,3,10).
- Mar 5 Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea.
- ORAL: Postcolonial theory and feminism. ("Theorising Gender" in Chrisman and Williams 191-267).
- BOOK REPORT: Spivak, G.C. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 243-61 (much reprinted).
- Mar 10 Caryl Phillips. Cambridge: A Novel.*
- ORAL: Phillips’ use of 19th century travel writings and slave narratives (cf. O’Callaghan, Evelyn in Journal of Commonwealth Lit. 29.2 (1993): 34-47; Gail Low in Research in African Literatures 29.4 (Winter 1998): 122-40).
- BOOK REPORT: Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic. Harvard UP, 2005 reissue (esp. chap.s 1, 2, and 3).
- Mar 12 Caryl Phillips. Cambridge: A Novel.
- ORAL: The syncretic narrative and Wilson Harris’s advocacy of syncreticism (see his Tradition, The Writer and Society, 1967 and The Womb of Space, 1983. Cf. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, chap. 6; Walcott’s “The Muse of History” in his What the Twilight Says: Essays, 1998).
- BOOK REPORT: Phillips, Caryl. A New World Order: Essays, Vintage International, 2002 (selections from “The Caribbean” and “Britain”).
- Mar 17 V.S. Naipaul. The Enigma of Arrival.*
- BOOK REPORT: Naipaul, V.S. Finding the Centre, Deutsch, 1984.
- Mar19 V.S. Naipaul. The Enigma of Arrival.
- ORAL: Postcolonial critiques of V.S. Naipaul: (Said in Salmagundi 70-1 (Spring-Summer 1986): 44-81, and Reflections on Exile, 2000; Cudjoe, Selwyn R, V.S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading, U of Mass. P, 1988 [chap on Finding the Centre and The Enigma of Arrival]; King, Bruce, V.S. Naipaul, 2nd ed. Palgrave, 2003 – chap 13).
- Mar 24 Salman Rushdie. Shame.*
- ORAL: Postcolonialism and postmodernism (cf. McClintock in Williams and Chrisman; Quayson in Schwarz, Henry and Sangeeta Ray, A Companion to Postcolonial Studies, Blackwell, 2000).
- BOOK REPORT: Homi Bhabha's essays on postmodernism and postcolonialism: chapters 1, 8, and 9 of
The Location of Culture, 1994.
- Mar 26 Salman Rushdie. Shame.
- ORAL: Parallels between Pakistani history and Shame.
- BOOK REPORT: Grewal, Inderpal. "Salman Rushdie: Marginality, Women, and Shame." Genders 3: (1988) 24-42.
- Mar 30-Apr 3 SPRING RECESS (Read The Satanic Verses).
- Apr 7 NO CLASS (Read The Satanic Verses).
- Apr 9 Salman Rushdie. Shame.
- ORAL: Magic realism (cf. Rushdie on Grass, Calvino and Marquez in Imaginary Homelands 1991: 299-307; Slemon, Stephen. "Magic Realism as Post-Colonial Discourse". Canadian Literature 116 (1988): 9-24.).
- BOOK REPORT: Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London, New York: Verso, 1994 (Introduction, and chapters 1 and 4).
- Apr 14 Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses.*
- ORAL: Rushdie’s views on The Satanic Verses in Imaginary Homelands, Penguin, 1992 (pp. 9-21, 393-429); Step Across This Line, Random, 2003 (pp. 213-36), plus interviews.
- BOOK REPORT: Appignanesi, Lisa and Sara Maitland, eds., The Rushdie File, Syracuse UP, 1990.
- Apr 16 Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses.
- ORAL: Critiques of Thatcherism and racism in 1970s-80s Britain (Hall, Stuart, “The Toad in the Garden”, 1988; Sinfield, Alan, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain, 1997: 116-51; Smith, Anna Marie. New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality. Cambridge Up, 1994; Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands pp. 129-38),
- BOOK REPORT: Ball, John Clement. Imagining London, U of Toronto P, 2004 (general chaps and section on Rushdie).
- Apr 21 Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses.
- ORAL: Critiques of Rushdie's work by Ahmad, Aijaz in In Theory, 1992 (chap. 4) , Spivak in Outside in the Teaching Machine, 1993 (chap 11), and Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1994 (chap 11).
- BOOK REPORT: Phillips, Mike and Trevor, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, HarperCollins, 1999 (chaps on recent immigrant experience).
- Apr 23 No class: read White Teeth.
- Apr 28 Zadie Smith. White Teeth.*
- ORAL: Theorizing British national identity (cf. Easthope, Antony. Englishness and National Culture. Routledge, 1999; Baucom, Ian. Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity. Princeton UP, 1999; Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000. Cambridge UP, 2002, pp. 118-55).
- BOOK REPORT: Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, Verso, 1991.
- Apr 30 Zadie Smith. White Teeth.
- ORAL: The Chalfens and FuturMouse (cf Dominic Head’s essay in Contemporary British Fiction, ed. Richard Lane et al, Polity, 2003, pp. 106-19, and Donna Harraway’s Modest_Witness . . ., Routledge, 1997, p. 60 ff.).
- May 5 Zadie Smith. White Teeth.
- May 7, 12, 14 Student presentations of outline final papers
- May 18 Leave your final paper in my mail box in MHB-413 by 12 noon.
Useful web sites:
Plagiarism
If you use the ideas or words of another writer as if they were your own without giving credit to the other writer you are guilty of plagiarism. Please consult the Schedule of Classes (“Cheating and Plagiarism”) for details of the University’s policy regarding plagiarism. If you are found to have plagiarized another writer’s words you will receive an F for the paper the first time and an F for the course on a repeat occasion.
Campus Technology Help Desk
The CSULB Technology Help Desk in the Horn Center Lobby is available for students. The Help Desk can assist you on a wide range of computer issues including: Operating Systems, CSULB Email Accounts, My CSULB, Beachboard, Remote Connection to CSULB, Microsoft Desktop Applications, Anti-Virus, Internet and Web related topics,. Contact the Help Desk by phone at 562-985-4505, email to helpdesk@csulb.edu or visit them on the web at helpdesk.csulb.edu.
Withdrawal Policy
Students who choose not to complete this course should withdraw officially as soon as possible and inform me. Withdrawals during the first two weeks do not appear on official records. Withdrawals between the third and twelfth weeks must be for “serious and compelling reasons” and require signed approval by me and the department chair. Withdrawals during the final three weeks of instruction are generally permitted only for accident or serious illness. They require signatures from me, the chair, and the Dean of the College, who may require withdrawal from all classes in which the student is enrolled.
Makeup and Attendance Policy
For a definition of “excused absences” see the University Catalog: Regulations – Class Attendance. Excused absences require you to inform me a week in advance of your absence. More than three unexcused absences will result in the lowering of your course grade by a grade point or more depending on the number of such absences. Students who miss exams or fail to meet deadlines for graded papers for what I consider a compelling reason (such as a religious holiday or jury duty) may make up that part of the grade. It is your responsibility to arrange with me an alternative if you miss the deadline for an assignment. If you submit an assignment late without a documented excuse a penalty for lateness will be imposed. A student who misses the final exam or fails to submit a final paper in lieu of a final exam without a documented excuse will probably receive an F or an Incomplete, depending on the circumstances and previous work.
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