Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC2103: Introduction to Postcolonialism

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Module Aims

The aim of this module is to develop your critical thinking about postcolonialism; deploy an interpretive and decolonial research method to understand the world; and, to enable you to understand the nature of power relations in the modern global order. By the end of the course, you should be able to interrogate and examine the categories of race, gender and class through a postcolonial and decolonial lens. The module will also prepare you for academic and other careers in the field of development, international politics, critical theory and security studies.

 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. discuss, analyse and critically evaluate competing theoretical perspectives in the study of postcolonialism;
2. demonstrate a familiarity with relevant empirical issues and examples.
Discipline-Specific Skills3. grasp and apply a variety of theories found in Politics and International Studies in order to assess and/or critique each theory and its application to specific practices;
4. locate these theories and the debates/questions which surround them in the larger context of the study of Politics, for example contending conceptualisations of power, identity, colonialism, and rival framings of world politics.
Personal and Key Skills5. engage with, and analyse challenging literature and articulating complex;
6. design and deliver presentations to peers, communicate effectively in speech and writing.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

 

  • ‘White Man’s Burden’: Introduction to Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial approaches I

 

  • Cartographies of Knowledge: Epistemic Violence and the Appropriation of Knowledge

 

  • Decoloniality and Futurity: Alternative Possibility/ies

 

  • Sites of Postcolonial Encounters: Museums, Statues and Curriculums

 

  • From Pachamama to the Anthropocene and back: Development as colonial discourse

 

  • What’s in Border? Race, Gender and Class

 

  • Can the Arts Speak Back?

 

  • The Postcolonial Global Order: Security Studies from below

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
221280

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities2211 x 1 hour workshop/lecture 11 x 1 hour seminar
Guided Independent Study128Private study – students are expected to read suggested texts and make notes prior to seminar sessions. They are also expected to read widely to complete their coursework assignments. More specifically, students are expected to devote at least: 66 (6 hours per topic/week) hours to directed reading; 6 hours to completing the formative research outline; 42 hours (3 hours/day over two weeks) for completing the essay; 10 hours (2 hours/day over 5 days) for completing literature critique pieces. The 4 remaining hours serve as a margin to be adjusted depending on the student in question.

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

  • ELE – College to provide hyperlink to appropriate pages
  • Kanopy;
  • podcasts;
  • blogs and vlogs;
  • cultural productions (songs; music videos; films; performances);
  • policy briefs;
  • annual reports from selected international organizations

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:

 

Dabashi, Hamid. The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism. Zed Books Limited

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The souls of black folk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. 2004

Davis, Angela Y. Women, race, & class. London: Vintage, 2011.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the subaltern speak?" (1988).

Nandy, Ashis. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism. (OUP India, 1989)

Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 2012.

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man's Burden” (1899). Poem.

Kothari, U. (2005). “Authority and Expertise: The Professionalization of International Development and the Ordering of Dissent”, Antipode, 37 (3).

Escobar, A. (1999). “The Invention of Development”, Current History, 98 (631): 382-386.

Escobar, A. (1997). “The Making and Unmaking of the Third World”. In: M. Rahnema, V. Bawtree, eds., The Post-Development Reader, London: Zed Books, pp. 85-93