Meetings:  Every other Thursday: February 3, 17.  March 3, 17, 31.  April 14, 28.  May 12

Texts: 

•    Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
•    Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills -  [Read “Lispeth,” “Miss Youghal's Sais,” “Yoked with an Unbeliever,” “His Chance in Life,” “Kidnapped,”  “In the House of Suddhoo,” “Beyond the Pale,”“Tods' Amendment,” “The Bronckhorst Divorce-Case,” “The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows,” “The Story of Muhammad Din,” & “To Be Filed for Reference.”  And read "The Man Who Would Be King," "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," and "The Bridge Builders."  Links to these stories are below.] 
•    Joseph Conrad, The Portable Conrad
•    Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
•    E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
•    Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

Additional Stories:

• Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Beach of Falesa."
• Kipling: "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," "The Bridge Builders," "The Man Who Would Be King."
• Somerset Maugham, "Rain."
   

British Colonial Fiction:  Writing the Empire

The emphasis of this course will be on British novels and stories set in what we now call “developing” or “third-world”countries.  (I put these words in quotations because those are terms that Europeans and North Americans often use to categorize these nations, not terms that these nations would necessarily use themselves.)  While we explore the elements of fiction we will also discover the ways in which the West has defined itself in its relationship with Africa and the East.  We will see how British authors presented non-Europeans, and we will discuss how this has affected our own attitudes toward non-western peoples and cultures.  At the end of the semester we will read a post-colonial novel, and we will see how one author from a so-called “third world” country presents his own culture and its relationship with a colonial power.

As we analyze how British authors represented non-white people, we will be studying how colonial stereotypes are created, maintained, and modified.   But our analysis does not apply only to colonial discourse.  An understanding of this process can be applied in other contexts.   This semester we will study some of the ways people in power represent people with less power, how they represent the people they are trying to control.   This semester, these “others” will be the “natives” of India, Malaysia, South America, or Africa.  But in other contexts, these may be any people from another culture, another race, or another gender.  They may be the poor, the young, or the disabled.   

In short, this semester we will study how literary representation can be a tool of power. 

•       Notebook Responses:  70%  These are due electronically on the Tuesday before each of our meetings. 
•       Final 10 page Researched Essay:  30%

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February 3 - Introduction to course, with readings in colonial discourse theory.
February 17 - Crusoe & Kipling stories.
March 3 - Kipling and Stevenson.
March 17 - Conrad's "Lagoon," "Outpost of Progress," and "Heart of Darkness."
March 31 - Conrad's Lord Jim. 
April 14 - Stevenson's "Rain."  Forster's Passage to India. 
April 28 - Achebe's Things Fall Apart. 
May 12 - Discussion of research paper, due May 20.