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The authors of The Empire Writes Back (1989), one of the initial and most influential publications in postcolonial literary studies, characterized the United States as “[t]he first post-colonial society to develop a ‘national’ literature,” and the authors go on: “In many ways the American experience and its attempts to produce a new kind of literature can be seen to be the model for all later post-colonial writing”. From this perspective the American Revolution is seen as the initial moment when the nation became “postcolonial.” Such an understanding of American history has been challenged by many critics. Peter Hulme, for examle, emphasized that the US, due to its pre-history as settler colony and its territorial expansionism, rather be understood as a country “postcolonial and colonizing at the same time”. Other critics have conceptualized the history of African-Americans and other racialized ethnic minorities in terms of “internal colonialism.. The seminar will first introduce concepts of postcolonialism as well as the debates on (post)colonialism in the Americas and on U.S. Imperialism. From these historical and theoretical perspectives we will read anglophone poetry, drama, short fiction and novels by authors from different historical periods. We will discuss the texts’ negotiation of “colonial encounters” in the Americas: Among the texts we will read are (in some cases only excerpts): W. Shakespeare The Tempest; Washington Irving “Rip van Winkle”; V.S. Naipaul “B. Wordsworth”; Jamaica Kincaid A Small Place; Gloria Anzaldúa Borderlands/La Frontera; Nuyorican poetry and prose. |
