ENGL 115
Rumble in the Jungle: Major Postcolonial Writers and Movements Fall 2015
Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed COMP 115
This is not the current course catalog

The antagonism between the West and the rest has been a defining feature of contemporary thought, especially during the struggles of the colonies to establish themselves as independent nations at the turn of the twentieth century. While armies and politicians were busy using the blunt tools of violence and political rabble-rousing to advance one side or another, many artists, writers, and theorists challenged the simplistic oppositions that made cultures out to be at odds with one another by giving voice to complex identities and histories. Our works will take us around the world, and stretch us across multiple histories of colonialism and its aftermaths. In addition to encountering a postcolonial serial killer, a pterodactyl in present-day India, and a famed boxing match sponsored by an African dictator, we will watch narrative and documentary cinema, look at visual art, and read poetry, fiction, essays, and philosophy, and consider how these media and genres work as forms of thoughtful resistance as well as creative expression. Key authors will include Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, V.S. Naipaul, Albert Memmi, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, and Mahasweta Devi. In asking students to think broadly and comparatively about discourses of otherness and their impact on artistic, philosophical, and other cultural production, this course will contribute to the college’s Exploring Diversity Initiative.