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A genre that often tends to be overlooked by critics and scholars, the short story nonetheless conveys the voices, and depicts the challenging reality of persons outside the mainstream on account of alienating post-colonial circumstances like poverty, lack of opportunity, and ostracism. Due to its poetic potential, the short story provides these so-called outsiders with a space from which to write about their experiences, be it the longing for a different identity, or for a resolution of cross-cultural conflicts, or for solutions to the problems faced by diasporic communities.
In this introductory seminar, we want to take a closer look at post-colonial short stories and to explore the transcultural potential of the genre. Among others, we will be reading short stories by writers like Salman Rushdie, Pauline Melville, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Texts:
Achebe, Chinua. "Dead Men’s Path." Girls at War and Other Stories. London: Heinemann, 1972. Print.
Mukherjee, Bharati. "The Lady from Luknow." Darkness. Markham: Penguin Books, 1985.
Melville, Pauline. "Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water." Shape-Shifter. New York: Pantheon, 1990. Print.
Okri, Ben. "Disparities." Incidents at the Shrine. London: Vintage, 1993. Print.
Rushdie, Salman. "The Courter." East, West. London: BCA, 1994. Print.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. "Interpreter of Maladies." Interpreter of Maladies. Stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.
Participation: Regular attendance, active participation, reading and writing assignments. Requirements include a short oral presentation (about 10 min) and a term paper.
If you have any questions, please contact me at: emanuel.blaich@uni-saarland.de |
