Caribbean Nonfiction - Einzelansicht

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Dear students, all courses will be taught as online courses with asynchronous access until further notice. Once you have signed on in PULS and have been admitted in PULS, your instructor will email you via PULS to let you know when and how to access the online material (moodle, etc.). Testatsleistungen (course requirements) may be subject to change. Students who cannot (yet) access PULS: Please email your instructor directly. It is possible that classes can be switched to classroom teaching (Präsenzlehre) at some point during the semester. If this happens, your instructor will let you know and classes will take place at the times originally scheduled.​Thanks to colonialism and tourism, for centuries the Caribbean has generated intense discursive attention on the part of Europeans and North Americans. But what about Caribbeans’ own views of the region? In fact, the latter has proved an immensely fertile ground for anti- and postcolonial thought of all kinds. Trenchant indictments of colonialism and important theories of racialization no less than the first trans-Atlantic studies and influential theories of the mixing of cultures have all originated in the twentieth-century Caribbean. Caribbean thinkers have thereby generated their own ideas about this complex and eminently unique region.

In this class, we will read and discuss essays of various tones and moods, from the lyrical to the analytical. Readings will mostly come from the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean (all texts will be read in English). Topics include creolization, tourism, the struggle with colonial legacies, views of tropical nature, race, and attitudes towards Caribbean literature the thinkers we will meet include Sylvia Wynter, Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Jamaica Kincaid, Suzanne Césaire, Derek Walcott, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Frantz Fanon. Attempts will be made to provide for both those beginning their study of the Caribbean and those who have already gained extensive knowledge of the region.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. ISBN: 978-0374527075

Other texts will be provided via Moodle.

Learning Journal with Reading Responses + Short Reflection Paper for 3 Credits or + Term Paper for 6 Credits