ENGL3401W: Decolonial Literatures of the Americas

This course begins with the assumption that "coloniality" as an idea and a practice does not end when the period of colonization ends. Instead, it continues on, through material violences that maintain and reproduce the legacies of colonization--legacies such as racial and gendered violence, exploitative labor, social death, forced migration, and uneven urbanization, among other pressing issues. This course will examine and compare what have been called the "decolonial" literatures of the Americas--literatures written in English or appearing in English translation that concern communities that have been oppressed and made invisible by colonialism. We will study a network of resistance, tactics, strategies, social movements, and ongoing creative practices, and we will critique the potential and limitations of literature as a tool for activism and social change. The course will focus on understanding the relationships between literature, art, politics, and memory, and it will foster learning by doing as well as community outreach and relationship with local Indigenous communities.Students will visit local art galleries and other locales, create and maintain a class blog to be featured on the course website, and engage in their own creative forms of decolonial critique through weekly blog posts. Students' final projects will also explore decolonial perspectives and activism that specifically involves local practices of water activism and re-linking to Indigenous ways of knowing. This course does not have prerequisites beyond the University's entrance requirements.

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