Admission requirements
None.
Description
This course introduces students to postcolonialism: its politics, ideas, and creations. It reviews the themes and legacies of colonialism as manifested in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These histories and products are approached through a variety of representations, including texts and images. The scholarly texts that frame this exploration are drawn from anthropology, literature, and history.
The course structure is thematic, with an emphasis on epistemological, comparative, and political aspects. The reading material explores demands for recognition and redistribution in societies transformed through imperial formations. Class discussion will evaluate questions of voice and visibility, of justice and mobility, as manifested in cultural forms in postcolonial societies. The texts explore colonialism’s psychic consequences in such creations, and the alternative imaginaries visible in them.
This course is structured through the musical idea of “call and response”. A call and response entails two distinct and succeeding parts, where the second part is a commentary or response to the first. Applied to this course, this means that in different realms, from philosophy to literature, we will think through how politics and aesthetics are in dialogue. Because this is a course on postcolonial societies and how they have been represented, we will orient our conversation around how postcolonial artists and thinkers have responded to western ideas. The postcolonial “response” to colonialism’s “call” means that we cannot think of western or European notions separate from non-western and postcolonial ones. They are entangled historically and imaginatively, and as such we must understand the interface between them, rather than assuming a purity or separateness.
We will engage with representations – stories, images, and films – that detail the postcolonial condition and theories that frame the public and private lives shaped by colonialism and its aftermath.
Course Objectives
Skills:
Students will learn how to utilize the conceptual vocabulary within the humanities and social sciences regarding colonialism and its afterlife in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They will enhance their comprehension of interpretive and comparative humanistic inquiry, and, through their writing, improve their analytical capacities. Finally, an emphasis on class discussion will improve verbal argumentation abilities.
Knowledge:
After engaging with course lectures and readings, students can expect to:
Become familiar with humanistic approaches to the study of colonialism and imperialism, and its psychological, political, religious, and gendered impacts.
Understand the importance of ideas and visuals in postcolonial politics, history, and culture.
Evaluate colonialism’s imprint in the creations produced by societies after independence, in a historic, comparative, and political framework.
Timetable
Timetables for courses offered at Leiden University College in 2025-2026 will be published on this page of the e-Prospectus.
Mode of instruction
This course employs interrelated formats for instruction and includes visual, digital, and textual materials. The first weekly class explores the weekly theme through analysis of assigned readings. This first weekly session provides context, highlights key concepts, shows different disciplinary approaches, and engages with the course texts. Attending these sessions and conducting the weekly readings is critical for students to write their weekly reflection, due 24 hours before the second session of the week.
The second class per week is devoted to deeper discussion of the assigned texts, supplemented with visual material that illustrate postcolonial productions. The course uses texts and films to help make sense of postcolonial life in its moral, social, and political aspects.
Assessment Method
Students are assessed on different parameters that correspond to discrete learning aims.
First, the learning aim of reading comprehension and critical understanding is assessed through a portfolio of weekly reflections from Weeks 1-7. This portfolio of seven reflections is worth 40% of the overall grade. Each weekly reflection is due on Wednesday (24 hours before the second seminar of the week on Thursday) and will be on the week’s texts. These reflections have two components: first, a close description of the weekly readings, which shows awareness of the author’s argument and reasoning, and second, your own analysis of their claims, and capacity to apply their ideas to the world.
Second, conceptual application is evaluated through a group digital production worth 30% and due in Week 6. For this assessment, students will be organized early in the course into groups and produce a digital production using online and artificial-intelligence tools.
Third, a written in-class final exam judges analytical and interpretive capacities. This exam will respond to set questions on the course themes and will occur in Reading Week. This is worth 30% of the overall grade. Students will formulate an argument, and empirically substantiate their position, using only course materials. Non-course texts and external references are not permitted in this exam.
Reading list
Students will be given access to the course readings by the first week of classes.
Registration
Courses offered at Leiden University College (LUC) are usually only open to LUC students and LUC exchange students. Leiden University students who participate in one of the university’s Honours tracks or programmes may register for one LUC course, if availability permits. Registration is coordinated by the Education Coordinator, course.administration@luc.leidenuniv.nl.
Contact
Dr. Ajay Gandhi, a.gandhi@luc.leidenuniv.nl
Remarks
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