Module Code - Title:
EH4004
-
CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL LITERATURES IN ENGLISH
Year Last Offered:
2026/7
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
N
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to apply a critical and cogent awareness of international literatures from the 20th and 21st centuries. This module will complete the historical trajectory of English core modules while expanding the purview of their reach to include Anglophone world literature. The module will introduce students to literary texts from around the world alongside key theoretical debates in the field of literary studies in a global context (connected to additional theoretical fields such as postcolonialism, indigeneity, ecocriticism, postmodernism, and so on). Students will learn to compare, contrast and combine different theoretical and methodological positions in the study of literature in English other than British and American.
Syllabus:
This core 4th year module will introduce students to contemporary global issues through the study of literary texts that critically engage the dominant binaries of Western knowledge production--such as master/ slave, center/margins, enlightenment/barbarism, authenticity/ hybridity, secular modernity/ religious conservatism, nation/nativism, and even Global North and Global South. We will read literary texts from the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim that address matters of language, travel, historical trauma, decolonization, practices of rewriting, humour, alternative histories, narrative genres, and representation, in order to think literarily about contemporary planetary predicaments such as refugee movements, humanitarian crises, climate change, and others.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
Demonstrate an improved and expanded knowledge of the literary field. Identify several important literary and theoretical debates in the field of global literatures. Analyze in depth literary themes in global literatures.
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to :
Build conceptual and analytical bridges across and between distinct historical and geographical areas of global literary studies.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to:
N/A
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
This module will be taught through a combination of lectures and tutorial discussions of course ideas and materials with a view to enhancing students' research and writing capabilities (graduate attribute: articulate) in the area of contemporary Anglophone literatures. The module is itself an exercise in 'decolonising English literatures', an ethical imperative in English studies as it addresses issues of historical and contemporary racism and exploitation (graduate attributes: courageous, responsible) and moving beyond traditional Western-centred Anglophone writing into a broader, global sense of cultural hybridity, requiring students to broaden their sense of what their studies in English entail (graduate atrribute: curious, agile). As such, much of the primary and secondary texts which will be studied were published post-2000.
Prime Texts:
Adichie, C. (2013)
Americanah
, New York: Anchor
Belcourt, B. (2020)
A History of My Brief Body
, Columbus, OH: Two Dollar Radio
Vandana S. (2014)
The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet
, U Chicago Press
Figiel, S. (2002)
They Who Do Not Grieve,
, Los Angeles, CA: Kaya Press
Kincaid, J. (1990)
Lucy
, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Hortle, E. (2020)
The Octopus and I,
, Sydney: Allen & Unwin
Other Relevant Texts:
Anzaldúa, G. (1987)
Borderlands/La Frontera
, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books
Cheah, Pheng, and Bruce Robbins, eds. (1998)
Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation
, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Glissant, E. (1997)
Poetics of Relation
, Ann Arbor, MI: U Michigan Press
Simpson, L. (2017)
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance
, Minneapolis: U Minnesota Press
Wenzel, J (2020)
The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature,
, New York: Fordham UP
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
BACHELOR OF ARTS
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN JOURNALISM AND DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
BACHELOR OF ARTS INTERNATIONAL ADVANCED ACCESS
BACHELOR OF LAWS (LAW PLUS)
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Spring
Module Leader:
Yianna.Liatsos@ul.ie