• Home
• Study
• Study Information
• Modules
• Module Information

Acts of Writing: From Decolonisation to Globalisation

Module description

Acts of Writing focuses on the processes of decolonisation, the decline of Empire, and the move to a globalising and interconnecting world, which have shaped the mid-20^th to early- 21^st century. The module allows you to consider key cultural and critical debates responding to these events. You will engage in detail with texts that consider questions of nationhood and community, revisionist historiography, the ethics of representation, collective guilt and responsibility, identity politics, new subjectivities and art’s relationship with economic and cultural globalisation.

Module aims - intentions of the module

• On Acts of Writing you will engage with a range of literatures and films from the African continent, Britain, the Caribbean, Ireland, and South Asia.

• The module is grouped around several major thematic blocks that will allow you to explore colonialism and its aftermath; the creation of national myths; neo-colonialism; productions of race, class and gender identities; postcolonial historiography; representing the margins; and globalisation.

• You will be invited to consider whether literature and film have developed new modes of expression and aesthetics to accommodate the socio-historical realities resulting from processes of decolonisation, nation building, transnational cooperation and globalisation. You will be expected to read literary and filmic texts in light of key postcolonial political and ethical debates and theories.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Identify and discuss at an advanced level literary and film form
• 2. Engage at an advanced level with current debates in postcolonial, critical, cultural and world literary theory and relate these to the modes of writing and film production
• 3. Confidently relate these literary modes to the relevant socio-political and historical contexts
• 4. Identify and discuss at an advanced level continuities and discontinuities with earlier debates in literary studies, particularly from the first half of the twentieth century

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse the literature and film of different cultures and genres and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
• 7. Demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary and film texts

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 8. Through session work and presentations, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 9. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 10. Through research for sessions, essays and presentations demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
• 11. Through sitting their final examination, demonstrate advanced proficiency in the use of memory and in the development, organisation, and expression of ideas under pressure of time

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• From Colonialism to Decolonisation and Independence
• Imagined Communities, Nationalism and Neo-Colonialism
• Race, Class and Gender identities
• New subjectivities in post-millennial global contexts

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Core reading:

• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)
• Bessie Head, A Question of Power (1973)
• Salman Rushdie, Shame (1983)
• My Beautiful Laundrette, dir. Stephen Frears (1985)
• Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother (1996)
• Ivan Vladislavic, Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked (2006)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11203
  

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Spectre of Capital (2013)
• Paul Gilroy, After Empire (2004)
• C. L. Innes, The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English (2007)
• Neil Lazarus (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies  (2007)
• Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

Key words search

Film, literature, Britain, Ireland, South Asia, Africa, Caribbean, diasporic writing, post-colonies, contemporary cultures