Undergraduate Course: South Seas Tales: Literature and Empire in Oceania (ENLI10337)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will explore a range of colonial and postcolonial writing of the Pacific region, beginning with a consideration of the inscription and contestation of Romantic stereotypes of the Pacific in Euro-American literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Later sections of the course explore (inter alia) the intertwined discourses of tourism and militarism in the Pacific following the Second World War, which witnessed the establishment of American, British and French nuclear testing facilities across the region; and the ways in which various indigenous Pacific writers bear testament to their 'living histories' by invoking Oceanian oral and written histories, narratives, cultural practices, and forms of resistance against new imperialisms in the region. |
| Course description |
Week 1. Herman Melville: Typee; extract from Rod Edmond's Representing the South Pacific.
Week 2. Robert Louis Stevenson: South Sea Tales (including 'In the South Seas'; 'The Bottle Imp'; 'The Isle of Voices' and 'The Beach of Falesá').
Week 3. Jack London: 'Ko'olau the Leper', 'The Terrible Solomons' and 'The Red One'.
Week 4. Albert Wendt: Leaves of the Banyan Tree; 'Towards a New Oceania' and poems from 'Inside Us the Dead'.
Week 5. Antinuclear and feminist poetry and prose: Sia Figiel: 'Songs of the Fat Brown Woman'; Selina Tusitala Marsh, poetry from 'Fast Talking PI'; Déwé Gorodé, 'Wave-Song' and 'Zone Interdite'; Hone Tuwhare, 'No Ordinary Sun'; Joe Balaz, 'Da Last Squid'; excerpt from Robert Barlay's Melal: A Novel of the Pacific.
Week 6. Epeli Hau'ofa, Tales of the Tikongs.
Week 7. Keri Hulme: The Bone People; selected poems and prose.
Week 8. ESSAY COMPLETION WEEK.
Week 9. Patricia Grace: Potiki, 'Parade' and 'Journey'; Witi Ihimaera, 'The Whale'.
Week 10. Alan Duff: Once Were Warriors;
Film: L. Tamahori (dir), Once Were Warriors (1994).
Week 11. Contemporary Pacific creative forms: poetry (including Samuel Cruickshank's 'Urban Iwi' and Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard's 'Saa Nafanuaa') and episodes from the animated comedy series Bro' Town.
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, through contributions to group discussion, independent reading, and assessed and non-assessed work, students will be able to:
-Identify dominant tropes in Euro-American discursive representations of Pacific Islanders from the late eighteenth century to the present day, and analyse contestations of these tropes in both Euro-American and indigenous Pacific writing
-Achieve an understanding of the complexities of indigenous Pacific creative expression, considering it not merely as a form of 'writing back' against imperialism but rather (or additionally) as firmly rooted in indigenous Pacific cultural traditions
-Articulate (in written and oral forms) a considered, informed sense of the breadth and range of Pacific writing, theory and contexts, as well as situating Pacific writing within the broader theoretical context of international postcolonial studies and ecocriticism
-Develop a critical vocabulary for analysing a range of creative forms including narrative, performance and 'spoken word' poetry, film, and music
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Reading List
| See 'syllabus' above |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email: |
Course secretary | Ms Sheila Strathdee
Tel: (0131 6)50 3619
Email: |
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