Participation (15%): Students will be required to attend each meeting for its full duration and to come prepared, having read all required readings for the meeting. In addition, students will be expected to provide in advance of the meeting one or two questions for discussion that A) seek clarification about particular arguments or ideas from the readings and/or B) allow the group to analyze and engage with key ideas from the readings.

Critical Response and Extension Papers (2X10%=20%) Students will be required to complete two short (1200-1500w) papers that critically respond to a particular theory or idea as presented in one or more readings by A) assessing the idea in relation to other theoretical concerns of the course, and B) bringing the idea or theory into dialogue with an example from one of the literary texts or films, or another cultural text. While students will not be expected to formally present their ideas to the class, they will be expected to share ideas from their papers during the discussion.

Research Paper (15% seminar and 35% essay=50%) Students will be required to complete an article-length paper that develops out of an idea, concept, or theory of interest from the course (15-25pp). This research project will be based on an inquiry model that specifically values the development of collaborative and group skills. The formal elements of the assignment include: 1) preliminary work-shopping of ideas; 2) the presentation of a 10-15 minute seminar; 3) and, finally, an essay. (Students enrolled in an MFA may produce a creative project that includes a reflective essay that discusses the piece in relation to course theories.)

Collaborative Project (15%) During the first few classes, the group will identify a collaborative project that they will undertake throughout the term: the group will determine the aims, form, content, and means of dissemination for the project.

NOTE: These are proposed course requirements and they will be discussed and negotiated during the first meeting; the group will come to consensus on any alterations to these requirements.

Course Schedule and Format

Week 1 – Introduction (13)

Arjun Appadurai, “Patriotism and it’s Futures” (13pp)


Week 2 – Theorizing the (Post)Imperial Nation (142)

Benedict Anderson, “Introduction,” “Cultural Roots” in Imagined Communities (1983/1991): 1-8, 9-36.

Frantz Fanon, “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” in The Wretched of the Earth (1963): 148-205.

Mohandas Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XIII, XIV, XVII, XX) (50).

Supplementary Viewing: The Battle of Algiers,1966 (Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo).

Week 3 – Theorizing Empire, the Nation, and Identity (107)

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Symptoms of Passage” and “Imperial Sovereignty”, in Empire (2000):137-156, 183-204.

Sunera Thobani, “Nationality in the Age of Global Terror,” in Exalted Subjects (2007): 217-252.

Mahmood Mamdani, “Modernity and Violence,” and “Culture Talk” (excerpt), in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004): 3-36.


Week 4 – The Problem of Universals (89)

Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Universalism and Belonging in the Logic of Capital,” in Public Culture 12:3 (2000): 653-678.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Righting Wrongs” 523-564.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” in Feminism without Borders (2004): 17-42


Week 5 – Empire and Responsibility (for the Other) (60)

Sherene Razack, “Those Who ‘Witness the Evil’: Peacekeeping as Trauma” in Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism (2004): 15-50.

David Jefferess, “Responsibility, Nostalgia, and the Mythology of Canada as a Peacekeeper” University of Toronto Quarterly (Forthcoming).

Dallaire, Romeo. “Conclusion” in Shake Hands with the Devil (2004).

Viewing: Shake Hands with the Devil, 2005 (Dir. Peter Raymont).

Week 6 – Terror and Responsibility (to the Other) (77)

Judith Butler, Preface, Chapters 1, 2, and 5, in Precarious Life (2004).

George Orwell, “A Hanging”, in George Orwell: Essays (1984): 14-18.


Week 7 – “One year she sat at the television weeping”

Dionne Brand, Inventory (2006).


Week 8 – Towards a Planetary Consciousness I (117)

John Donne, “Meditation XVII” http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php

Thich Nhat Hanh, “Interbeing” in Being Peace: 83-104.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Moral Disagreement”, and “Kindness to Strangers” in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006): 45-68, 155-174.

Paul Gilroy, “The Planet,” in Postcolonial Melancholia (2005): 29-83.


Week 9 – Towards a Planetary Consciousness II (30)

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “’Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity Through Anticapitalist Struggles” in Feminism Without Borders (2003): 221-252.

Viewing: The Fourth World War (2003), Scared Sacred (2004), Bamako (2006)


Week 10 – “Frogs embody the spirit of life”: Arguing Ethics

J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (2003)


Week 11 – The Figure of the Global Citizen: The Intellectual and Power

J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

Edward Said, “Representations of the Intellectual,” in Representations of the Intellectual (1994): 3-24.

Arundhati Roy, “The Ladies Have Feelings, So… Shall We Leave it to the Experts?” in Power Politics (2001): 1-34.

Supplementary Viewing: Drowned Out (2000).

Week 12 – Research Seminars


Week 13 – Conclusion – The Intellectual, Global Citizenship, and the Ethics of Empire


Further Reading

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity (2005).

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid (2005).

Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Fear (2006).

Derrida, Jacques. “On Cosmopolitanism,” in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001): 1-24.

Esteva, Gustavo, and Madhu Suri Prakash. Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures (1998).

Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004).

Heron, Barbara. Desire for Development: Whiteness, Gender, and the Helping Imperative (2007).

Gandhi, Leela, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-siecle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (2006).

Ignatieff, Michael. Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (2003).

Said, Edward. Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004).

Sen, Amartya, “Making Sense of Identity,” and “West and Anti-West,” in Identity and Violence (2006): 18-39, 84-102.

Shiva, Vandana, Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005).

Steger, Manfred B., and Nancy S. Lind. Violence and Its Alternatives: An Interdisciplinary Reader. (1999).

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline (2003).

Szeman, Imre. “The Nation as Problem and Possibility” in Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism, and the Nation (2003): 22-64.

Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990).