The Verbal and The Visual: Dialogues Between Literature, Film, Art and Philosophy - ENGL8670

Overview

This module involves a materialist analysis of the dynamics of colonialism, anticolonialism and postcolonialism. It explores places and people shaped by key modern historic processes, such as colonial conquest, dispossession, decolonization, postcolonial independence, partition, and migration. The module also examines connections between war, exclusion, territory and freedom, and it ruminates on processes of contradiction and negotiation, convergence and discord, clash and reconciliation in relation to political and personal conflict.

Details

Contact hours

Total Contact Hours: 20
Private Study Hours: 280
Total Study Hours: 300

Availability

Spring

Method of assessment

Assignment (5,000 words) – 100%

Indicative reading

Indicative reading list:

Waad Al-Kateab & Edward Watts, For Sama Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer
Behrouz Boochani, No Friend but the Mountains: The True Story of an Illegally Imprisoned Refugee
Emile Habiby, The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist Stephanos Stephanides, The Wind Under My Lips
Samar Yazbek, Planet of Clay
Street Art and Graffiti from the East Mediteranean

See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)

Learning outcomes

The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:

- Demonstrate a comprehensive and conceptual understanding of knowledge on, and a critical awareness on new insights of 'body and place' as a key concept in postcolonial texts;
- Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of colonial and postcolonial contexts with critical awareness and application inclusive of theoretical, historical, political, cultural and geographical approaches;
- Compare and analyse the ways in which body and place is read, written and constructed in a broad range of prose, poetry and film;
- Explore the ways in which body and place are connected to broader questions of postcolonial identity and culture
- Explore core concepts and themes such as multiple-mutable identities; experimentation with form and style; dislocation, displacement; diaspora, refugee, asylum seeker, exile; globalisation; migration, movement and borders; imaginative geography; trauma and mental health; nations and nationalism; literature, arts and activism;
-Apply and interrogate relevant methodologies, including theoretical, (such as postcolonialism, spatiology, Marxism, feminism, ecocriticism), mythological and philosophical strategies appropriate to understanding postcolonial texts;

The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:

- Demonstrate an ability to analyse postcolonial texts critically and make comparisons across a range of readings;
- Demonstrate critical and argumentative skills necessary for participating in seminar discussions and giving oral presentations;
- Demonstrate the skills to carry out independent research during presentations and essays;
- Demonstrate the ability to critically evaluate and creatively deploy key philosophical, theoretical, historical, political and spatial perspectives;
- Demonstrate the ability to construct original, innovative and complex arguments;
- Demonstrate the ability to conduct interdisciplinary research by evaluating material from different sources;