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THIRD SEMESTER CORE COURSES

EN010301 Reading India 11

EN010302 Post Colonial Fiction 12
EN010303 Body, Text and Performance 13
EN010304 Literature and Gender 14
EN010305 Ethics in/as Literature 15

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Semester 3 - Core Course 11:

[EN010301] -Reading India

Total Credits: 4
Total Hours: 25
Weightage:
Objectives:
The course is intended to provide an insight to the historical, cultural and literary heritage of
India by acquainting the students with major movements and figures of Indian literature in
English. Questions of language, nation and aesthetics figure prominently among the objectives of
this course.
Course Description:
The course explores the origin and growth of Indian writing in English especially in the colonial
and post colonial context. Representative selections from all the four major genres of Poetry,
Prose, Novel and Drama which highlight the evolution of the coloniser’s language in the native
soil, the differences in the thematic and stylistic aspects between the pre independence and post
independence periods will be studied in detail. The problem of modernisation in Indian writing
in English, the Diaspora and the quest for identity also will be focussed. A close study of select
literary texts including translations of regional literatures is expected to acquaint the students
with the cultural diversity of the country as well as the Indian philosophy reflected in these
writings.

Module 1 [Essays]:
1.1 A.K. Ramanujan: “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking?”
1.2P.P Raveendran: “Genealogies of Indian Literature”. Economic and Political Weekly. Vol 41.
No. 25. June 24-26, 2006.Pp 2558-2563.
1.3 Meenakshi Mukherjee:“The Anxiety of Indianness’’ in The Perishable Empire. PP
166-185.

Module 2 [Poems]:
2.1Toru Dutt: Our Casuarina Tree
2.2Sarojini Naidu: An Indian Lovesong
2.3 Rabindranath Tagore: The Child, Gitanjali (section 35)
2.4 Nissim Ezekiel: Minority Poem
2.5K. Sachidanandan: How to go to the Tao Temple
2.6Jayanta Mahapatra: The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street
2.7Kamala Das: The Old Playhouse
2.8Ranjit Hosekote: Madman
2.9C.P. Surendran: At the Family Court

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Seminar:
2.10Syed Amaruddin: Don’t Call Me Indo-Anglian
2.11Sujata Bhatt: Muliebrity

Module 3 [Plays]:
3.1Girish Karnad: The Fire and the Rain
3.2Mahesh Dattani: Tara

Seminar:
3.3G.P. Deshpande: A Man in Dark Times

Module 4 [Fiction]:
4.1R.K. Narayan: The Guide
4.2Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
4.3Amitav Ghosh: The Shadow Lines
4.4Arundhati Roy: God of Small Things

Seminar:
4.5Living Smile Vidya: I am Vidya: A Transgender’s Journey

Module 5 [Regional Writings]:

5.1Bankim Chandra Chatterjee: Ananda Math
5.2U.R. Ananthamurthy: Samskara
5.3Anand: Vyasa and Vigneshwara
5.4Sharan Kumar Limbale: Akkarmashi

Seminar:
5.5K.R. Meera: Hangwoman

Texts for Consultation:

1. K.R Sreenivasan Iyengar :Indian writing in English
2. Salman Rushdie: Imaginary Homelands
3. Meenakshi Mukherjee:Twice Born Fiction : Indian Novel in English
4. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan: Lie of the Land
5. Susie Tharu: Subject to Change: Teaching Literature in the Nineties
6. Ashish Nandi: The Intimate Enemy
7. G N Devy: After Amnesia
8. Sujit Mukherjee: Translation as Discovery
9. R. Pardhasaradhy (ed.):Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets
10. A K Mehrotra (ed.):An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English
11. Eunice D’ Souza (ed.): Nine Indian Women Poets: an Anthology
12. M.K.Naik: Aspects of Indian Writing in English
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Semester 3 - Core Course 12:

[EN010302]-Postcolonial Fiction

Total Credits: 4
Total Hours: 25
Weightage:

Objectives:
To introduce the students to the discursive nature of colonialism, and the counter-discursive
impulses of postcolonial theory, narratives and texts.

Course Description:
The course attempts to cover through representative texts the writing, reading and critical-
theoretical practices based on the (post)colonial experience. While a segment of the course
addresses the consequences of European expansion and the creation and exploitation of the
‘other’ worlds, the course also addresses ‘internal colonisations’ of diverse kinds.
Module 1 is a conceptual orientation; it includes extracts from three of the ‘seminal’ writings on
what ‘postcoloniality’ is all about.
Module 2 is India-specific; it has a slight slant towards ‘hybridity’ ‘spectrality’ and ‘subalternity’
- as the texts by Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Salman Rushdie, and C Ayyappan would amply
attest.
Module 3 is a choice take on West Asia; alongside the unavoidable Edward Said, this section
tries to tease out a familiarity with ‘Arabic’ literature as it engages itself in postcolonial
concerns.
Module 4 is on Africa. It might appear that this section is in a curious sense ‘patriarchal’!
However, the selection-choice has to do with the weight of cultural capital that these authors
bring, and also the understanding that non-male voices have adequate representation in other
courses within the same syllabus.
Module 5 is on South America/Carribean. Here the effort is to try and wrench this writing corpus
from the analytical frame that reduces it to the Magic Realist/Fabulist mode.

Module 1 [Conceptual]:
1.1 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin: “Cutting the Ground: Critical Models of Post-
Colonial Literatures” in The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post- Colonial
Literatures. Routledge, 1989. (Chapter 1 PP.15-37)
2.2 Dipesh Chakrabarty: “Introduction: The Idea of Provincialising Europe” in Provincialising
Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
3.3 Ania Loomba: “Feminism, Nationalism and Postcolonialism” in
Colonialism/Postcolonialism

Module 2 [India]:
2.1 Homi K. Bhabha: “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” in Homi
K. Bhabha. Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994. (PP.85-92)
2.2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “The Burden of English” in Gregory Castle (ed) Postcolonial
Discourses: An Anthology

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Seminar:
2.3 Salman Rushdie: East, West [“The Prophet’s Hair” & “Yorick”]
2.4C Ayyappan: “Spectral Speech” & “Madness” [V. C. Harris translation…]

Module 3 [West Asia]:

3.1 Edward W. Said: “Narrative and Social Space” in Culture and Imperialism
3.2 Tayeb Salih: Season of Migration to the North
Seminar:
3.3Assia Djebar: Women of Algiers in Their Apartment [“Day of Ramadan”]
3.4 Najwa Qa‘war Farah: For Whom Does Spring Come [“The Worst of Two Choices or The
Forsaken Olive Trees”]
3.5 Khayriyah Ibrahim as-Saqqaf: “The Assassination of Light at the River’s Flow”

Module 4 [Africa]:
4.1 Frantz Fanon: “On National Culture” in The Wretched of the Earth.
4.2 Chinua Achebe: “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” in Hopes and
Impediments.
Seminar:
4.3 Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Secret Lives and Other Stories [“Minutes of Glory”] & Hellen Nyana
[“Waiting”]
4.4 J.M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians

Module 5 [Americas/Carribean]:
5.1José Rabasa: Allegories of Atlas in The Postcolonial Studies Reader
5.2Juan Rulfo: Pedro Páramo
Seminar:
5.3Clarice Lispector (Brazil): “Looking for Some Dignity”& Maria Virgina Estenssoro
(Bolivia): “The Child That Never Was” in Celia Correas de Zapata (ed): Short Stories by
Latin American Women: The Magic and the Real
5.4 Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea.

Specific Additional Readings:

1. Waïl S. Hassan: “Postcolonial Theory and Modern Arabic Literature: Horizons of
Application”, Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2002), pp. 45-64
2. Waïl S. Hassan: “Postcolonialism and Modern Arabic Literature: Twenty-First Century
Horizons” in Anna Ball, Karim Mattar (eds): The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial
Middle East
3. Graham Holderness: “Arab Shakespeare: Sulayman Al-Bassam's TheAl-Hamlet Summit”,
Culture, Language and Representation, Vol IV, 2007, pp. 141-150
4. Graham Huggan: “Decolonizing the Map” in The Postcolonial Studies Reader
5. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern” in In Other Worlds/
Subaltern Studies 5
6. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

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7. George Lamming: “A Monster, a Child, a Slave” in Pleasures of Exile. Univ. of Michigan

Press, 1960. (PP. 95-117)
8. P. A. Aborisade: “National and Revolutionary Consciousness: Two Phases of Ngugi's Artistic
Praxis”, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 18(2) 1990
9. Udayakumar: "The Strange Homeliness of the Night: Spectral Speech and the Dalit Present in
C. Ayyappan's Writings," Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, XVII: 1 and 2 (2010, pub.
2013) pp. 177-91.
10. Ngugi wa Thiong’o: ‘The Language of African Fiction’ in Decolonising the Mind

Texts for Consultation:

1. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin: Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies,
Routledge
2. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds.): The Post-Colonial Studies Reader,
Routledge
3. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin: The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice
in Post- Colonial Literatures. Routledge
4. John McLeod: Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester Univ. Press
5. Ania Loomba:Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge
6. Leela Gandhi:Postcolonial Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh Univ. Press
7. Elleke Boehmer:Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. OUP
8. Gregory Castle (ed.):Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology. Blackwell
9. Padmini Mongia (ed.):Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Arnold
10. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme & Margaret Iversen (eds.):ColonialDiscourse/Postcolonial
Theory. Manchester Univ. Press
11. Homi K. Bhabha (ed.):Nation and Narration. Routledge
12. Donna Landry & Gerald MacLean (ed.):The Spivak Reader. Routledge
13. Edward Said:Orientalism. Penguin
14. Aijaz Ahmed:In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. Verso
15. Robert Young:Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. Routledge
16. Helen Gilbert: Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology
17. Sarankumar Limbale: Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature
18. Cornel West: Race Matters
19. Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
20. Paul Gilroy: There Ain’t Any Black in the Union Jack
21. bell hooks: Ain’t a Black Woman
22. Paul Gilroy: Small Acts
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Semester 3 - Core Course 13:

[EN010303] -Body, Text and Performance
Total Credits: 4
Total Hours: 25
Weightage:
Objectives:
The objectives of the course include facilitating an understanding of the basic structural, thematic
and theoretical patterns which govern the poetic process, especially in its relation to the
performative or the theatrical.

Course Description:
The interface between the verbal and the visual is the area under discussion here. Drama,
Theatre, Body, Performance and performativity need to undergo close scrutiny here. The way the
aspects of power and powerlessness are constructed and performed have to be analyzed. One
cannot disregard the cinematic medium in a study of performance. Theatres, dealing with issues
like gender, ethnicity, caste etc. need to be introduced. Anti-Aristotelian notions like Alienation
Effect, modern dramatic modes like Comedy of Menace, the techniques of cinematic
adaptations, etc. are also to be discussed in connection with the texts. Though seemingly
different, Expressionism and similar modes of theatrical performance should be made part of
classroom discussion. Other performance patterns like dance, performance in the form of
gender/transgender/autobiography have also to be seriously considered within the gamut of this
paper.

Module 1 [Theoretical]:
Discusses the theories of body, performance, gender, power needed for critical deliberations in
the ensuing modules.

1.1 Richard Schechner: “What is Performance Studies?” & “What is Performance?”

(Performance Studies: An Introduction (Third Edition), Chapter 1, PP. 1-5 & Chapter 2,
PP 28-31)
1.2 Judith Butler: Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and
Feminist Theory (Theatre Journal, Vol.40 PP. 519-531)
1.3 Jen Pylypa: Power and Bodily Practice: Applying the Work of Foucault to an Anthropology
of the Body (Arizona Anthropologist, Vol. 13, PP. 21-36, 1998.)

Module 2 [Desire]:
Here is desire dramatized in terms of expressive, subtle and didactic modes. The first play
presents elements of Expressionism, the second gives an idea of Comedy of Menace, and the
third introduces Epic Theatre, Alienation Effect and the musical Opera. They all speak about
violence on the body and mind of desire in myriad forms.

2.1 Tennessee Williams: A Street Car Named Desire

2.2 Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party

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Seminar:
2.3Bertolt Brecht: The Three-penny Opera

Module 3 [Gender/Transgender]:
This module is about gender/transgender and its theatrical dimensions. “Lysistrata” provides a
slice of the classical Greek comedy playing again in an arguably subversive mode the male gaze
through feminine eyes.“Ruined” is set in Congo, a reworking on the lines of Brecht’s Mother
Courage, yet surely a deviation, speaking about the horrors of rape at the time of an African civil
war. “A Friend’s Story” mediates a love triangle involving a lesbian relation, set in Mumbai, at a
time when homosexuality in India was a crime. “A Mouthful of Birds” is an ensemble of
unnatural plots and theatrical performances, staged in an avant-garde fashion, discussing female
violence and transgressions of gender norms through madness correlated with one another using
themes from The Bacchae of Euripides.

3.1 Aristophanes: Lysistrata

3.2 Lynn Notage: Ruined
3.3 Vijay Tendulkar: A Friend’s Story (Mitrachi Goshta)
Seminar:
3.4Caryl Churchill and David Lan: A Mouthful of Birds

Module 4 [Autobiography/Performance]:
Other performances in the sense of gender as performance: Isadora Duncan’s dance, seen
through her autobiography- even autobiography as performance; a Bollywood sports biopic on
Mary Kom; American Queer Theatre struggling to carve a niche in the popular Broadway as
narrated through the personal experiences of playwright, performance artiste and gender theorist
Kate Bornstein, an avowed gender non-conformist, along with her play that appears as a chapter
of the autobiography.

4.1 Isadora Duncan: My Life (Autobiography)

4.2 Omung Kumar: Mary Kom (Biopic)
Seminar:
4.3Kate Bornstein: Queer Life/Queer Theatre&Hidden: A Gender, a play in two acts (“Gender
Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of us”, Chapters 14 & 15, PP. 187-275) –
(Autobiography)

Module 5 [Cinematic Dimensions; Race/Caste]:

Cinematic tellings/adaptations dealing with the issues of race, slavery and caste feature in this
module. The problematizing of the binaries of villain and superhero, the black and the white etc.,
and the play and the critique of stereotypes are all ingredients which spice up the module. The
debates are set to tone in the deftly crafted “Unbreakable” by the Indian-American Director
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan. William Shakespeare’s play Othello adapted into the Indian

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context in Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Omkara” throw light on the dark recesses of racism and caste
politics. Set against the brutal and vulgar feudal system in Kerala, scripted by P. Balachandran
and directed by Rajeev Ravi, “Kammattipaadam”, the third film, marks the ways in which the
human bodies here have been socially and culturally constructed, cutting through time and space.

5.1Andrew Dix: “Films and Ideology” (Ch. 8 of Beginning Film Studies PP.229-268)
5.2M. Night Syamalan: Unbreakable
5.3 Vishal Bhardwaj: Omkara
Seminar:
5.4Rajeev Ravi: Kammattipaadam

Specific Additional Readings:

1. Descartes: Mind-body dualism (The Principles of Philosophy, PP.60-65)
2. Richard Schechner: Performance Studies: An Introduction (Third Edition)
3. Philip C. Kolin: Roland Barthes, Tennessee Williams, and “A Streetcar Named
Pleasure/Desire”: JSTOR.
4. Aloysia Rousseau: Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1958) and The Dumb Waiter (1960) or
the Intermingling of Farce and Menace.
5. Alice Rayner: Harold Pinter: Narrative and Presence. JSTOR.
6. Bertolt Brecht: The Street Scene: The Basic Model of an Epic Theatre
7. Kim H. Kowalke: Singing Brecht vs. Brecht Singing: Performance in Theory and Practice. 8.
Alexander G. Harrington: Directing “The Three-penny Opera”
9. Emily B. Klein. Sex and War on the American Stage: Lysistrata in Performance, 1930-2012.
10. Carmen Mendez Garcia: “This is my Place, Mama Nadi’s”: Feminine Spaces and Identity in
Lynn Nottage’s Ruined.
11. Rebecca Ashworth and Nalini Mohabir: Ruined: From Spectacle to Action
12. Fatimah Saleh Ali Al-Humoud: Violence against Women: A Feminist Study of Women’s
Situation during the Civil War of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Lynn Nottage's Ruined.
13. Rohini Hattingady: Note on A Friend‘s Story. Collected Plays in Translation. 14. Priyanka
Chandel: Engendered Subjectivities: Construction of Queer Identity in Vijay Tendulkar's A
Friend's Story and Mahesh Dattani's On a Muggy Night in Mumbai (Thesis).
15. Hidden: A Gender, a play in two acts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFD8NpA3hec
16. Bina Toledo Freiwald: Becoming And Be/Longing: Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw and My
Gender Workbook
17. Ann Daly: Isadora Duncan's Dance Theory (Dance Research Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2
(Autumn, 1994), pp. 24-31)
18. Sudhish Kamath: Mary Kom, about the Heroine, not the Boxer. The Hindu. Sept. 05, 2014.
19. M.C. Mary Kom: Unbreakable: An Autobiography
20. Valerie Bonnet: Sport in Films: Symbolism versus Verismo. Film Genre Theory, Sports
Films, Towards Defining Sports Films (The French Journal of Media Studies)
21. Laura Nutten: Madness and Signification in A Mouthful of Birds

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