123223 SE Literary Seminar / BA-Arbeit / MA British/Irish/New English (2018W)

Students will gain the knowledge of the creativity of the selected representative late 20th century Anglophone/postcolonial literary fiction authors primarily from the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, Africa and modern multi-ethnic Britain.
They will be able to identify the most significant literary movements and authors, as well as describe the specificity of the cultural 20th century developments in the former parts of the British Empire. They will analyze and interpret the literary texts discussed by applying the postcolonial as well as the transnational critical approach, which will be studied at the beginning of the course.
Students will gain the knowledge of some of the best known 20th century Anglophone writers: novels (e.g. Wide Sargasso Sea, Disgrace, White Teeth, The Buddha of Suburbia), novellas and selected short stories. The list of shorter literary works will be handed to students in class.
They will learn how to reflect on different interpretive standpoints, depending on the milieu and the contextualization of literary works in the appropriate socio-political context, and to formulate an effective, well argued and linguistically correct oral presentation of the seminar paper in class.