COML 4290 - Postcolonial Poetry and the Poetics of Relation

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 4840, FREN 4350, SPAN 4350) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Co-meets with COML 6350/ENGL 6850/FREN 6350/SPAN 6350. Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

J. Monroe.

What kinds of poetry might be usefully characterized as “postcolonial” and what are the stakes of such a designation? How common, variable, translatable are values deemed “postcolonial” for particular poetics across cultures? Is there such a thing as a transnational, transcultural, “Postcolonial Poetics?” What relation(s) do specific textual/poetic features or strategies have to geopolitical, cultural, historical, economic circumstances, and to the condition(s) of what has come to be called the “postcolonial” in particular? With special reference to Edouard Glissant’s influential concept of a “poetics of relation,” attending as well to our own situatedness as readers-perhaps also, though not necessarily, as writers-of poetry within U.S. (and) academic context(s), this seminar will focus on Caribbean poetry as an especially fruitful site for exploring a diversity of approaches to these and related questions concerning postcoloniality, poetry, community, language, culture, and identity.