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Teacher
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ZULLI TANIA
(syllabus)
Syllabus
DESCRIPTION:
The course examines the nature and characterization of postcolonial studies in the area of Anglophone literature. By analysing a selection of theoretical and literary texts, students will be encouraged to take a critical outlook of different postcolonial methodologies, in order to gain consciousness of the impact of postcolonial theory on and through fiction. Specifically, the dynamic link between colonial and postcolonial literature and culture will be analysed in relation to the concepts of identity, migration, and race.
NUMBER OF CREDITS: 8
INSTRUCTOR: Tania Zulli, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature
By the end of the course, students should have an understanding of the main aspects of contemporary postcolonial theories, and achieve a critical awareness of the wide-ranging thematic influence of race and identity topics, with a specific focus on South African literary texts. The emphasis on migration, as developed through literary texts both in nineteenth-century and modern literature, will be instrumental to the connection of such themes to modern social and cultural issues.
This course is taught in English.
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
Week 1 – 11th/12th March 2019
1. Introduction and course description
2. Talking about the transnational: nation, space, cultures
3. Joseph Conrad and Nadine Gordimer as transnational authors
PART I Introducing Postcolonial Studies
Week 2 – 18th/19th March 2019
1. Defining the terms: colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, postcolonialism
2. Postcolonialism: When? Where? Who? What?
3. The “death” of postcolonialism
Week 3 – 25th/26th March 2019
1. Talking about the English-Speaking World: Which Language? Whose Language?
2. Adopting another language: the experience of Jumpa Lahiri
3. Hybridity, Ambivalence, Mimicry
PART II – Postcolonial Literature and the Question of Migration
Week 4 – 1st/2nd April 2019
1. The Issue of Migration: Cultural Problems and Perspectives
Isolation vs. integration, silence vs. communication
2. Migration writing, writing about migration
3. Building an Idea of Transnational Fiction
Week 5 – 8th/9th April 2019
1. Past and present migrations: Joseph Conrad and Nadine Gordimer
2. From past to present: a transnational approach
3. Migration writing, writing about migration
Week 6 – 15th /16th April 2019
1. Amy Foster: language, exile, migration
MID TERM WRITTEN ASSESSMENT – NO PRESENTATIONS
Week 7 – 29th/30th April 2019
1. Amy Foster: critical reading and class discussion NO PRESENTATIONS
2. Swept from the Sea
2. Amy Foster and Swept from the Sea: a comparative reading
Week 8 – 6th/7th May
1. Nadine Gordimer’s modern migrations
2. Inside Out Migrations: The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
3. The Pickup: Dislocation, religion, and communication
Week 9 – 13th/14th May
1. The Pickup: critical reading.
2. Prof. Kim Salmons, University of St. Mary’s, Twickenham, London,
Seminar on Conrad and Food
(reference books)
REQUIRED READINGS:
• Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 1-20.
• Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 1998, pp. 173-183.
• Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language”, in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 428-434.
• Douglas Kerr, “Conrad and the Immigrant: The Drama of Hospitality”, Review of English Studies 67 (279), 2016, pp. 334-348.
• Elleke Boehmer, “The writing of ‘not quite’ and ‘in between’”, in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Oxford, OUP, 2005, pp. 225-236.
• Franz Meier, "Picking up the Other: Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup", EESE 2/2003, http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic23/franz/2_2003.html
• Ileana Dimitriu, 2003, “The End of History: Reading Gordimer’s Post-Apartheid Novels”, Current Writing, 15, 1, pp. 17-37.
• J. M. Coetzee, “Nadine Gordimer”, in Inner Workings. Literary Essays 2000-2005, London, Harvill Secker, 2007.
• Joseph Conrad, “Author’s Note”, Almayer’s Folly, London, Wordsworth Classics, 2011, pp. 5-6.
• Joseph Conrad, “Amy Foster”
• Katherine Isobel Baxter, “‘Senseless speech’ and inaudibility in Conrad’s ‘Amy Foster’: rethinking trauma and the unspeakable in fiction”, Textual Practice, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2015.1084364
• Krystyna U. Golkowska, “Empathy and Othering in Joseph Conrad’s Amy Foster”, AWEJ, Special Issue on Literature No. 2 October, 2014, 60-68.
• Masoud Farahmandfar, "Picking Up an Identity: A Postcolonial Reading of Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup", International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies, 2 (2), April 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.35
• Nadine Gordimer, “Writing and Being”, in Living in Hope and History, London, Bloomsbury, 1999, pp. 195-206.
• Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup, London, Bloomsbury, 2001.
• Nurten Birlik, “Two Cases of Marginalization told from the Wings: “Amy Foster” and Swept from the Sea”, Trames, 2009, 13 (63/58), 1, 83–91.
• Peter Childs and Patrick Williams, An Introduction to Postcolonial Theory, London, Harvester, 1997, pp. 1-25.
• Richard Ambrosini, Reconceptualizing Conrad as a Transnational Novelist: A Research Programme, Studia Neophilologica 2012, DOI:10.1080/00393274.2012.751662, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2012.751662
• Stephen Clingman, "Village, Empire, the Desert", in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 230-239.
• Stephen Clingman, “Introduction. The Grammar of Identity”, in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 1-34.
• Stephen Clingman, “Waterways of the Earth: Joseph Conrad”, in The Grammar of Identity, Oxford, OUP, 2009, pp. 35-48.
• Tania Zulli, Amy Foster, Venezia, Marsilio, 2018.
• Tania Zulli, Joseph Conrad: Language and Transnationalism, Chieti, Solfanelli, 2019.
• Tania Zulli, “Stepping across which line? Geographical and intellectual dislocations in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, Forms of Migration-Migration of Forms, Vittoria Intonti, Federica Troisi e Marina Vitale (a cura di), Bari, Progedit, 2009, pp. 238-246.
• Tania Zulli, ““The desert is mute”: Spatial and Linguistic Extremes in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup”, ed. Nicoletta Brazzelli and Frédéric Regard, Textus XXIX – 2 (May-August 2016), pp. 155-168.
AUDIOS AND VIDEOS:
• http://www.livinglanguage.com/blog/2016/03/01/reflections-on-language-from-in-other-words-by-jhumpa-lahiri/
• http://lithub.com/jhumpa-lahiri-on-language-and-the-longing-for-home/
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/31/jhumpa-lahiri-in-other-words-italian-language
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Università Roma Tre