English Literature: Postcolonial Literature – (M.Sc.)

This programme offers students the opportunity to undertake a substantial piece of supervised independent research in their chosen field, within this subject. Postgraduates will be guided by and contributing to the theory and knowledge in their specific area, and will present the insights obtained from their work in a manner consistent with academic standards and conventions. Alongside the original research they will study two advanced taught courses relevant to their field of study.

Learning Outcomes Students, who follow this programme, will:

* develop a knowledge and understanding of the roles played by various forms of writing in the shaping and representation of postcolonial subjectivity and context;
* discover a range of colonial and postcolonial discourse from countries and regions such as Africa, the Americas, Asia, Canada and Oceania, and will explore a range of issues contingent upon colonisation, independence, and the formation of postcolonial diasporic communities;
* be encouraged to contextualise postcolonial writing in terms of its chronological and geographical specificities, and deepen knowledge and understanding of selected themes and topics in a way that enables them to select and execute an independent piece of research;
* become familiar with the variety of materials that can be used to explore specific evolutions from forms of political colonisation to modes of cultural independence and self-expression in postcolonial states;
* gain a critical understanding of some of the ways in which the theory and practice of postcolonial writing has been conceptualised and understood by scholars, past and present;
* grasp the methodological issues and problems of literary and cultural analysis, enabling the student to create original academic work to underpin (where appropriate) further interdisciplinary research at PhD level.