GSC4411

Reading the `post-colonial': text and theory

Mary Griffiths

12 points
*.2 hours per week (seminar)
* Second semester
* Gippsland
* Prerequisites: First degree with a major in mass communications English or related discipline(s)

Objectives On successful completion of this subject, students will have studied new literatures in English and other cultural texts drawn from India, Singapore, Australia and Britain; they will be able to contextualise and problematise ways of conceptualising the `other' in dominant versions of post-colonial theory, within wider considerations of current cultural and media theory dealing with intercultural relations.

Synopsis This subject provides students with an introduction to a specific, contemporary field of literary, media and cultural theory and, through the reading of fiction, film, poetry, political speeches and cultural policy sites accessed via the internet, an opportunity to apply major theoretical frameworks. A study of the concept of `difference' and `the construction of the subject' will serve as a background to the distinctive ways these concepts are formulated in `post-colonial' theory. A discussion of colonial discourse analysis; `third world' and other typologies: concepts such as `writing back to the centre', `Orientalism' and `national allegory'; and an analysis of key contributions to the field by, for example, Said, Spivak, Rushdie, Hall, Chow and Bhabha will be included in the subject.

Assessment Assignment one (1200 words): 20%
* Assignment two (1500 words): 20%
* Major assignment (6300 words): 50%
* Research journal: 10%

Prescribed texts

Coetzee J M Foe Penguin, 1988
Collins M Rotten Pomerack Virago, 1992
Kapur S Bandit Queen (video recording)
Lim S C Fistful of Colours EPB, 1993
Moffat T Bedevil (video recording)
Murray L Subhuman redneck poems Tower Books, 1996
Williams P and Chrisman L Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader, Columbia U P, 1994