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The course aims to read a variety of texts in the light of the colonial, anticolonial and postcolonial forces that shaped them: historical, political and cultural. The module will explore how processes of imperial expansion and colonial rule, together with their dismantling and their contemporary forms have shaped and transformed Anglophone writing. It offers a longue durée approach to colonial and postcolonial literatures, engaging with themes of race and empire, abolition and decolonisation, and environment and globalisation. It covers a range of genres (plays, poetry, travel-writing, novels and film) and periods, from conversion narratives to Black British cinema. Students will be encouraged to consider how processes of imperial expansion and colonial rule, together with their dismantling and their contemporary forms, have shaped and transformed Anglophone writing. The course will foreground the study of Anglophone literatures as a key context for the development of concepts such as Orientalism, the Black Atlantic, the modern world-system, postcolonial ecocriticism, and decolonial and diaspora studies, as well as for contemporary configurations of nationalism, imperialism and globalisation.

Teaching will be organized around twenty lectures across the Autumn and Spring terms. The Autumn term lectures will comprise introductory lectures and set text lectures. These will be accompanied by two-hour seminars led by the course team, in which students choose from various combinations of the set texts. The Spring term lectures will be thematic, covering different processes relevant to the course through key literary works. These themes may include extraction, trade, plantation systems, conversion, abolition, decolonisation, migration, neo-imperialism, globalisation and resource fictions. Students will choose from a range of options that involve texts relevant to the processes mentioned here, and some of these options may be co-taught across different period specialisations.

Students will have a choice between taking a written exam or 8,000-word course essay, either of which will comprise 100 per cent of the summative assessment.

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