| CODE | ENG2050 | ||||||||
| TITLE | The Postcolonial Memoir | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | The first part of the study-unit will review the writing of memoir with particular emphasis on the emergence of the writing of refuge, displacement and the political memoir. The first few lectures will place memory studies in the context of the post-colonial realities outlined above, and will refer to various critical positions in post-colonial studies that are of ongoing importance today. The second part of the study-unit will take students on an actual, detailed “journey in memoir” across the post-colonial world, examining the many layers involved in the transmission of personal, cultural and political memory and its thematic concerns as they have emerged in memoirs written across a diverse range of post-colonial contexts during the last years of the twentieth century and over the past two decades. Texts for detailed study will include Zakes Mda’s ‘Sometimes There is a Void’ (South Africa), Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘In Other Words’ (US/Italy), Vikram Seth’s ‘Two Lives’ (India), Salman Rushdie’s ‘Joseph Anton: A Memoir’ (UK/US/India), Raja Shehadeh’s ‘Palestinian Walks’ (Palestine), David Malouf’s ‘The One Day’ (Australia), Hisham Matar’s ‘The Return’ (US/Libya), Sally Hayden’s ‘My Fourth Time, We Drowned’ (Ireland/North Africa), Sara Suleri’s ‘Excellent Things in Women: A Memoir of Postcolonial Pakistan’ (US/Pakistan), Edward W. Said’s ‘Out of Place’ (US/Palestine) among other memoirs. Study-Unit Aims: - To present a range of memoirs that have emerged from the post-colonial world; - To teach some of the most pivotal concerns present in the writing of post-colonial memoir in South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, West Asia, the United States, Europe and other contexts in the past three decades; - To identify core thematics across memoirs from different post-colonial contexts in a comparative way; - To familiarise students with the writing of memory in contexts of historic cultural, humanitarian and political significance; - To look into the modes of storytelling and narrative techniques employed by memoir writers across a range of geographic, ethnic, cultural, political and gender-based contexts; - To understand the shared concerns between memory studies and the writing of memoir across the post-colonial era. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Understand and discuss the memoir form in a post-colonial and a world-literary context; - Grasp the importance of memory writing as a means of asserting cultural, ethnic, political, familial, national and communal pasts, stories and ongoing realities; - Discuss shared concerns across the memoirs studied; - Appreciate the importance of life writing as a means of expressing the cultural, humanitarian, political and environmental challenges of the present moment; - Expand their appreciation of the literary to encompass memory writing, memorial non-fiction and self-narrative. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Discuss life- and memory writing as they arise from actual post-colonial contexts and conditions worldwide; - Read and analyse the post-colonial condition, planetary challenges, cultural and political shifts and migrations today from the point of view of individual and communal accounts, memories and stories; - Foster a sense of understanding and solidarity through studying shared and varying characteristics between memory texts across a diverse range of contexts. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Dalrymple, William, ‘From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium’ (London: HarperCollins, 2012). - Hayden, Sally, ‘My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route’ (Glasgow: 4th Estate, 2023). - Malouf, David, ‘The One Day’ (Collingwood: Black Inc., 2003). - Matar, Hisham, ‘The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between’ (London: Penguin, 2016). - Mda, Zakes, ‘Sometimes There is a Void: Memoirs of an Outsider’ (London: Penguin, 2013). - Rushdie, Salman, ‘Joseph Anton: A Memoir’ (London: Random House, 2012). Supplementary Readings: - Assmann, Aleida, ‘Cultural Memory and Western Civilisation: Functions, Media, Archives’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). - Erll, Astrid, ‘Memory in Culture’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). - Marcus, Laura, ’Autobiography — A Very Short Introduction’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). - Moore-Gilbert, Bart, ‘Postcolonial Life-Writing Culture, Politics, and Self-Representation’ (London: Routledge, 2009). - Seth, Vikram, ’Two Lives’ (London: Penguin, 2008). - Shehadeh, Raja, ‘Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape’ (London: Profile Books, 2010). - Suleri Goodyear, Sara, ‘Excellent Things in Women: A Memoir of Postcolonial Pakistan’ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). - Varma, Rashmi, ‘The Postcolonial City and its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay’ (London: Routledge, 2011). - Young, Robert JC, ‘Postcolonialism — A Very Short Introduction’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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