Literatures of Empire
ENGL 313
Spring 2025
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01
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This seminar will reexamine the literary and cultural history of Britain by tracing the emergence of "English literature" from the same transatlantic crucible as the racial categories of Enlightenment empire. Through readings from English literature's early origins in the Anglo-American transatlantic to its consolidation during the apex of the British empire, we will look at how the genres most frequently associated with liberal individualism (novels, lyric poetry) run parallel to the emergence of visual and rhetorical categories for imagining the boundaries and limits of the human and the individual. We'll focus on the techniques of literary form--and literary study--that helped construct and make sense of empire. Over the course of the semester, we will consider how the conceptual crises and contradictions in the production of British imperial power through the tangled nexus of capitalism, colonialism, and slavery spurred on new genres (the historical novel, the colonial anti-bildungsroman, the imperial gothic), and how novelists wrestled with the period's key categories of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality. Along the way, we'll trace how an archive of imperial writings have been taken up by anti- and decolonial theorists and writers. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ENGL) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Readings may include fiction, poetry, and autobiography by Leonora Sansay, Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë, Catharine Parr Traill, and Jean Rhys, and critical readings by Sylvia Wynter, CLR James, Toni Morrison, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Jodi Byrd, and Georg Lukács.
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Examinations and Assignments:
2 short papers, anthologies exercise, final paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Contributes to the fulfillment of ENGL major requirements: LH2, BL, WL, TH, elective.
This course will be taught by Professor Sierra Eckert. |
| Instructor(s): Eckert,Sierra Times: ..T.R.. 01:20PM-02:40PM; Location: FISK122; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 1 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 4 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 3 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 2 | 3rd Ranked: 1 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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