Fall 2007 Courses

English 342-01: Representing Violence: Anglophone Fiction and Film (Jarrin)

T/TH 1:00-2:30pm, OLRI 170

From anticolonial revolutions to the sectarian violence of postcolonial civil wars, from Bombay and Belfast to the diasporic communities and criminal underworlds of London and New York, in this seminar we'll explore representations of violence in contemporary Anglophone literature and film. With a focus on the ethics and aesthetics of violence, we'll read from a selection of literary genres: poetry, drama, novels, critical essays. Several questions will animate our discussion: How have Caribbean, Indian, African, and Irish independence movements – as well as their violent colonial and postcolonial histories – reshaped the languages and contours of contemporary literature? How have postcolonial civil wars and the resulting upheavals and migrations shifted the focus from national to transnational and/or diasporic bodies of literature? What is the role of sexual and gender politics in shaping and/or responding to cultures of violence? How do these narratives represent scenes of violence within the gothic, horror, gangster, crime, war, and documentary genres? How might these authors and filmmakers revise or refuse colonial, imperial, and canonical literary/cinematic forms and generate languages of resistance? From the outset, we'll also examine the meanings, cultural assumptions, and limitations of the term "Anglophone" and consider what's at stake in acts of textual and cultural translation.

Course fulfills what was formerly the Emerging Voices requirement.

Potential Readings: Poetry by Eavan Boland, David Dabydeen, Ciaran Carson, Derek Walcott. Prose by Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nuruddin Farah, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Patrick McCabe, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie. Drama by Brian Friel, Athol Fugard. Essays by Hannah Arendt, Partha Chatterjee, Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Potential Films: Stephen Frears, Dirty Pretty Things; Paul Greengrass, Bloody Sunday; Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers; Ousmane Sembene, Xala; Jim Sheridan, In the Name of the Father.

Fall 2007 Course Listings