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Culture, Crisis and Ecology in a Postcolonial World

Module description

This module offers an introduction to World Literatures and film focused on Africa, the Caribbean, Middle East and South Asia, assessing how texts inscribe the social, historical and environmental impact of colonialism and new and adapted forms of imperialism. Focussing on issues such as development and disaster, conservation and animal rights, resource exploitation, and the effects of neoliberalism and global tourism, the module will introduce you to a range of texts – essays, films, novels, poems, and short stories – to investigate the cultural representation of the consequences of global crisis. While considering stylistic and thematic features, the module will map the convergences and divergences of postcolonial and environmental perspectives. This focus enables you to explore the deep connections between imperial power relations and contemporary issues of globalization. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module invites you to explore relationships between empire, representations of ‘the natural world’, and cultural responses to political, social and ecological crisis. It will enable you to reach an informed understanding of the relationship between postcolonial and ecocritical approaches to literature and aims to introduce you to a wide range of primary materials in a number of different genres spanning the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Further, it will provide you with the theoretical and methodological skills that will enable you to engage critically with this rich field. Where appropriate, the module will encourage you to identify connections between key writers and genres and other relevant movements. Your studies throughout will be guided by the module tutors’ own research in this new and growing area of literary studies.

“Culture, Crisis and Ecology in a Postcolonial World” will enable you to explore the ways in which different forms of imperialism continue to function in cultural, political, economic and ecological spheres, to equip you with the ability to understand these processes, and to alert you to the global consequences they entail.

By introducing you to a range of texts which deal with the question of continuing imperialism and the effects of forms of historical and contemporary globalization you will explore the ways in which cultural representations of colonialism and its legacies, including environmental degradation and disaster, are inflected and complicated by other factors such as gender, race and social class. These are all important considerations for anyone interested in employment in the cultural, heritage and environmental sectors.’

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

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

• 1. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of cultural responses to notions of crises and ecology in postcolonial contexts from the mid-twentieth to early twenty-first century
• 2. Demonstrate an informed critical understanding of similarities and differences across and between texts, authors and genres of writing from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Asia
• 3. Demonstrate a developed ability to apply skills of close reading and of comparative analysis
• 4. Demonstrate an informed critical understanding of relevant scholarly work in the field of postcolonial literary studies and ecocriticism

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

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

• 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse a range of literatures and concepts and to relate their concerns and modes of expression to their cultural, political, social and theoretical contexts
• 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 ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to relate these ideas to literary texts

ILO: Personal and key skills

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

• 8. Through module participation, demonstrate communication skills, an ability to work both individually and in groups, and demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
• 9. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 10. Through sitting a final examination, demonstrate proficiency in the use of memory and in the development, organization, 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:

• What is Neocolonialism? What is Postcolonial Ecocriticism?
• Resource Fictions and the World-System
• Foreign Aid and the spectre of dependency
• The Writer as Activist
• Neoliberalism and Tourism
• State-sponsored violence and counter-insurgency
• ‘Natural’ Disasters, Shocks and Eruptions
• Civil War, Trauma and recovery

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

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

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

Basic Reading/Viewing:

• Farah, Nuruddin, Gifts
• Melville, Pauline, The Migration of Ghosts
• Oonya Kempadoo, Tide Running
• Saro-Wiwa, Ken, A Month and a Day
• Stephanie Black, Life and Debt
• Ari Folman, Waltz With Bashi

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11529

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Amin, Samir. The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. New York: The Monthly Review Press, 2013.
• Guha, Ramachandra and J. Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. London: Earthscan, 1997
• Lazarus, Neil. The Postcolonial Unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011.
• Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Post-colonialism. 3^rd ed. London: Routledge, 2018.
• Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale:Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books, 1999.
• Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso, 2015.
• Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo. Postcolonial Environments. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
• Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, London: Harvard UP, 2011.

Key words search

Postcolonial Literatures, World Literatures, Globalisation, Ecology, neo-colonialism, anti-colonialism, postcolonialism; African, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian writing