Graduate seminar, Venice International University, Oct. 18-22, 2004

Instructors: Prof. Dr. Frank Heidemann, Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikanistik, LMU Prof. Dr. Richard Janney, Institut für Anglistik, LMU Prof.Dr. Graham Huggan, Department for English Literature and Postcolonial Studies, University of Leeds

Registration Participation is restricted to 15 students. Applicantions should be submitted to Frank.Heidemann@vka.fak12.uni-muenchen.de and to janney@lmu.de by not later than July 2nd. Course language is English. Read more ...In 2002, the second edition of Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin´s seminal introduction to postcolonial literary / cultural studies, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures was published. Dynamic new sections were added on globalization, the environment, religion and the media, reflecting a shift in the field away from earlier, predominantly literature-based approaches to Commonwealth/postcolonial cultural production toward historically informed analyses of current social/cultural issues, marking postcolonial studies as a significant site of contemporary global cultural critique. This new understanding of a ´postcolonial from below´, as the critic Robert Young describes it, entails the elaboration of ´a politics of the subaltern, that is, [of] subordinate classes and people´ (Young 2003:6), which counteracts the theoretical elitism that still arguably dominates a rapidly transforming field. The opening up of postcolonial studies to populist social / cultural debate, often surrounding the figure of subaltern, has required the development of new cross-disciplinary modes of critical analysis. Literary / cultural studies, as before, still has an important role to play here; but so too do sociology, political science, ethnology / anthropology and development economics. The seminar will look at a variety of new approaches to postcolonial studies, comparing them to older but not necessarily outdated critical-theoretical models, and testing their applicability to issues (global inequality, environmental degradation, ethnic / religious conflict, media ethics) that are of direct relevance to the contemporary postcolonial world. The seminar will comprise four four-hour sessions run over a five-day period, and will allow both for the discussion of up-to-the-minute postcolonial readings and fop the presentation of work in progress by the members of the seminar group. The seminar is primarily designed for participants in the University´s international PhD programme in postcolonial studies, but is open to other suitably qualified faculty students on request. Works Cited: Ashcroft, W., G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (2002) The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, London: Routledge. Young, Robert J.C. (2003) Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Note: Financial Support is not available. Participants cover transport and accommodation.

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