ENGL 375 Global South Connections

New course, Winter 2021 Term 1

This course investigates the global connections between politics, development and literature sparked by the wave of decolonization that occurred in the middle of the twentieth century.  Taking up South Asian decolonization as an exemplary case study, we will read speculative fiction from the region, paired with essays on Global South histories of decolonization, development, and political radicalism. What did decolonization mean, politically and culturally? What kinds of literary and cultural movements did it inspire? How did dreams of political freedom influence theories of utopia and experiments in fiction? We will read texts by Nalo Hopkinson, Uppinder Mehan, Amitav Ghosh, Mimi Mondal, Vandana Singh, Sami Shah, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Robin D. G. Kelley, and others.

Are there speculative fiction writers you’d like to see included? Is there a particular political movement you’d like to learn more about? I’m reviewing several candidates for assigned reading including unusual books from small presses like Maia Ramnath’s Decolonizing Anarchism (AK Press, 2011) and well known transnational studies like Robeson Taj Frazier’s The East is Black (Duke Univ Press, 2014). There’s space for requests until 1 August 2021.