Module description
This module will explore the postcolonial politics of sexuality, in particular looking at the way in which empire produced and disseminated a distinct model of ‘sexuality’. As such, we will exert critical pressure on the category of ‘sexuality’ to work through its historical valences and contemporary significance. Students will examine the centrality of sexual practices, norms and exclusions to nationalism, globalisation, migration, diaspora, and the ‘War on Terror’.This approach both builds upon and explores the limitations of queer and feminist approaches to the sexual. By reading texts from multiple national contexts (including Ghana, India, the USA, South Africa, and Trinidad), this module will examine the ways in which the politics of sexuality differ across regional, national and local contexts. Through literature, film, and visual art, students will explore how cultural producers have reproduced, refracted, constructed and contested colonial ideas about sexual difference, gender norms, marriage, family, and sexual practice.
Assessment details
1000-word assignment (15%), 3000-word essay (85%)
Teaching pattern
One two-hour seminar weekly