Issues in Postcoloniality
This course will survey postcolonial theories relevant to understandings of our contemporary global world. The seminar aims to broaden understandings of mediated cultures within a transnational framework by highlighting how questions of gender, ethnicity, and diaspora are represented and conveyed in the face of colonial history, conflicts, postcolonial issues, and political transitions. In engaging with novels, films, theoretical work, and current events from the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries, we will be concerned with issues related to postcolonial critique, transnational feminist theories, peace and conflict studies, visual culture, and cultural theory, amongst other fields. In engaging with a range of themes and topics, (e.g., transitional justice, ecocriticism, transnational migrations, terrorism, neo-orientalism, cultural exoticism, social networks, democratic changes), we will be especially attentive to how race, ethnicity, nationality, and physical ability further structure and inform understandings of colonialism, postcolonialism, sex, and gender.
  • Dates: November – January 2020
  • Location: NOG – Utrecht University
  • Credits: 5 ECTS (credits can only be awarded after an accepted written paper. Students not requiring any credits will receive a certificate of attendance)