ENGL 21033 - Postcolonial Poetics

Course Credit: 1
Maximum Credit: 0

POSTCOLONIAL POETICS This class considers poetic production as a political act of world-making. Together, we will consider: what can poetry do? What about the form gives it so much meaning? Through the course, students will come to see how poets use the forms and allusivity of poetry to launch critiques of social ills. By reading deeply in one or two poets each week, this course will both introduce students to methods both for reading poetry and for reading anti-colonially. Writers examined may include Agha Shahid Ali, Okot p’Bitek, Rupi Kaur, M. NourbeSe Philip, Derek Walcott, and W. B. Yeats. To highlight the connections between the poets we read, students will collaborate on group-based “Storymap” that expands on the concerns that connect the writers we will study in Africa, the Caribbean, and Oceania. [AH]