Decolonising English Studies from the Semi-Periphery

Description

This book investigates how decolonising the curriculum might work in English studies ― one of the fields that bears the most robust traces of its imperial and colonial roots ― from the perspective of the semi-periphery of the academic world- system. It takes the University of Lisbon as a point of departure to explore broader questions of how the field can be rethought from within, through Anglophone (post)coloniality and an institutional location in a department of English, while also considering forces from without, as the arguments in this book issue from a specific, liminal positionality outside the Anglosphere. The first half of the book examines the critical practice of and the political push for decolonising the university and the curriculum, advancing existing scholarship with this focus on semi-peripheral perspectives. The second half comprises two theoretically-informed and classroom-oriented case studies of adaptation of the literary canon, a part of model syllabi that are designed to raise awareness of and encourage an understanding of a global, pluriversal literary history. Contents About the Author Contents Introduction References Part I: What Decolonisation Is and Why English Studies Needs It Decolonising the University: A Turn, Shift, or Fix? Decolonising Factories of Knowledge Portugal’s Semi-peripherality From the Universal to the Situated, Towards Pluriversality References Excavating the Imperial History of English Studies Knowledge, Power, and Selection Literature and the “Globalectical Imagination” References Interrupting How the Literary Canon Is Taught Dialogue, Relationality, and Emancipatory Politics Against Deficit and Accommodation Approaches The Aftering and Presentism of the Literary: A Radical Historicist Approach to the Canon References Part II: What a Decolonised Curriculum for English Studies Can Look Like Beyond Stasis: Intertextuality, Spreadability, and Fandom References Adaptation Case Studies: Wuthering Heights and Home Fire The Hypertextualities of Wuthering Heights Inter-imperial Encounters in the English Literature Semi-peripheral Classroom A Hypertextuality Perspective to Teaching Wuthering Heights “Nelly, Make Me Decent, I’m Going to Be Good” “Always Historicize!” Antigone Among British Muslims—Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire References Course Descriptions: English Literature (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) and English Literature (Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries) Learning Outcomes Learning-Teaching Methodologies Coherence of Learning-Teaching Methodologies with the Learning Outcomes Notes on Online and Blended Classroom Learning-Teaching Syllabi Coherence with the Learning Outcomes Conceptual and Methodological Coordinates Historical-Cultural Coordinates and the Politics of “English Literature” Socio-aesthetic Worldviews and Literary Adaptation The Creative-Critical Multimodal Project Syllabi for English Literature (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) and English Literature (Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries) English Literature (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) English Literature (Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries) References Concluding Notes References Index