Culture, Community, Identity

Overview

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Yasmeen Narayan
• Assessment: a 4000-word essay (100%) and an unassessed five-minute presentation

Module description

This interdisciplinary module examines postcolonial cultures, communities and identities framed by broader debates on the persistent criminalisation of historically marginalised and minoritised communities and contemporary histories of colonial occupation and warfare. We will discuss the ethics and politics of work on racism, postcoloniality and decoloniality; orientalism, primitivism and colonial nationalisms; retheorising culture, community, hybridity and creolisation and postcolonial belonging, urban cultures and diaspora. We will then explore contemporary global multiculture, ‘race’ and beauty before turning to debates on sexual violence, the imperial histories of 'western feminisms', ‘carceral feminisms,’ 'homonationalisms' and the ‘War on Terror' and then postcolonial racial nationalisms and religious authoritarian movements. We will examine debates on histories of criminalisation, police violence and community resistance in Britain. The module will conclude as we explore transdisciplinary discussions on 'whiteness' and contemporary legacies of empire.