The course outlines recent development in cultural critique by forwarding a postcolonial approach through which cultural encounters and cultural products are critically analysed. It refers to the way language, nation, identity and ideals of culture are constructed and how they have shifted from colonial, to postcolonial global realities.

Questions of medium specificity, genre, canon and traditions are addressed through a close analysis of several cultural products, in particular cinema but also in literature and other media, by focusing on how categories of gender, race, and ethnicity intersect and operate for the construction of processes of in and exclusion. Questions of power, representations and disciplinarity are addressed through the analysis of texts, images and film that contest, trespass and rearticulate fixed national boundaries and monolithic identities and convey cosmopolitan values and diasporic affinity networks. Specific case studies of postcolonial films, short stories and art products will be addressed with the scope of deploying new methodological instruments for studying new configurations of gender, race and culture.

Early Exit option for international exchange students (5 ECTS)
 
Exchange students who are required to return to their home university before January, are allowed to choose an Early Exit option for this course. The Early Exit option means that students can finish the course before Christmas break, receiving 5 ECTS for the course. Students must make arrangements with the course coordinator at the start of the course.

This course is the second course in the minor Postcolonial Studies, for more information about this minor see: http://students.uu.nl/en/node/351/postcolonial-studies.

LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major, need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See for more information: https://tcs.sites.uu.nl/