Module Information
You will study two modules per semester and complete the course over two years. An indicative list of modules is given below.

• Postcolonial Theories
• Rewriting Canonical Texts
• Exploration/Exploitation: Colonial/Postcolonial Writing 1500-1800
• Diaspora City
• Popular Postcolonial: Prize Winners and Best Sellers
• Independent Project
• Research Methods
• Dissertation.

The purpose of the Independent Project is to enable you to produce work that may help you to prepare for a future career or for doctoral research, or to combine your current career with postgraduate study. The work that you produce on this module will allow you to apply your knowledge to a project which could be of practical use to other scholars, or of educational, creative or cultural interest. You can choose from either a work-based project, usually in collaboration with your current employer or place of voluntary work, a web resource such as a hyperlinked version of a text (out of copyright), a guide
to other web-based resources for a particular text or author, or a literature review essay relevant to colonial and/or postcolonial literature and theory.

EN720 – Research Methods
This module introduces MA students to a range of research methods. It serves as an introductory module that gives students the research skills and knowledge they will require to identify and access resources essential for their study. Topics will include such things as evaluating editions of texts, e-resources and websites, identifying, using and evaluating on-line resources, referencing and bibliographic skills.

EN721 - Postcolonial Theories
This module will consider anti-colonial resistance including that in the work of thinkers such as CLR James, Una Marson, Albert Memmi, George Lamming, Aime Cesaire, Claudia Jones and Frantz Fanon. You will engage with founding thinkers, key theorists and new and emerging academics including Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Gilroy, Rey Chow, Trinh T Minh-ha, Declan Kiberd, John McLeod, Leela Gandhi and others, in order to engage with multiple regions and areas of debate including globalization and neo-colonialism, postcolonial approaches to gender and to sexuality, politics and socioeconomic class, digital postcolonialism and postcolonialism and ecocriticism. Familiarity with a wide range of ideas and with the tension in postcolonial studies over representation will enable you to develop your own confident critical voice.

EN722 - Rewriting Canonical Texts
Postcolonial literature and theory involves retelling, reinterpreting, and reading interruptively (Spivak) or contrapuntally (Said). On this module, you will read canonical texts from the history of English literature alongside rewritings of those texts which aim to revise the imperial representations of ‘natives’ or of locations, with a postcolonial commitment. Texts such as The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe, and Heart of Darkness will be reinterpreted from a postcolonial perspective, and read alongside In The Castle of My Skin (Lamming), Foe (Coetzee), and Things Fall Apart (Achebe). You will think about the ways that literature was used as part of the colonial project, through, for example, the teaching of English literature in colonial schools and the performance of Shakespeare’s plays in India, as well as the ways that retellings and translations of literature including the poetry of Omar Khayyam and The Arabian Nights stories were received and retold in the colonial period, and the ways in which they have been reinterpreted in postcolonial contexts since.

EN723 – Exploration/Exploitation: Colonial/Postcolonial Writing 1500-1800
This module examines some seminal texts of the colonial period such as Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, Diaz’s Conquest of New Spain and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It examines writing about colonialism in relation to Ireland, the Americas, Africa, Persia and Asia exploring such issues as the representation of otherness, rights of possession, descriptive geography, cannibalism, and the significance of language.

EN724 - Diaspora City
This module will look at the changing representation of cities in literature by Disapora writers like Monica Ali (Brick Lane) or Hanif Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia) with a focus on London but will also include a consideration of other cities where appropriate. It will consider how narratives of migration present a fluid and shifting metropolis; the city as a site of cultural interchange (McLeod, 2004); and the relationships between identity and space. Some of the themes considered in relation to the literary texts are: utopian tendencies, romanticising of immigrant experiences, paradigms of difference, disruption and violence, links between nation and city.

EN725 - Popular Postcolonial: Prize winners and Bestsellers
This module will consider the history of book prizes, the changing face of short lists and winners where the proportion of postcolonial novels is increasing. In addition, the module will address bestselling postcolonial novels which are not necessarily prize winners but have been included on ‘best of’ lists such as those of mass broadcast reading clubs like The Richard & Judy Book Club. Together, study of these two areas will allow you to engage in a politicized reading of the novels which considers canon formation and the tensions between high, low and middle-brow culture. As well as reading novels such as Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie) and The White Tiger (Adiga), a variety of interviews, reviews and commentaries about the novels and authors will be considered.

EN726 - Independent Project
The purpose of the Independent Project is to enable you to produce work that may help you to prepare for a future career or for doctoral research, or to combine your current career with postgraduate study. The work that you produce on this module will allow you to apply your knowledge to a project which could be of practical use to other scholars, or of educational, creative or cultural interest.

You can choose from either a work-based project, usually in collaboration with your current employer or place of voluntary work, a web resource such as a hyperlinked version of a text (out of copyright), a guide to other web-based resources for a particular text or author, or a literature review essay relevant to colonial and/or postcolonial literature and theory.

EN727 - Dissertation
The dissertation enables students to explore a topic of their choice in greater detail than has been possible on the previous modules. Through individual on-line tutorials students are helped to examine their ideas independently and to undertake a detailed study of their selected topic.

These modules are subject to change.