South Asian Fiction: Contemporary Transformations.
South Asian fiction in English has become a strong presence in contemporary literature and now represents some of the most original and globally-marketable fiction being written today. Since it started to gain international recognition in the early 1980s, South Asian literature has also been co-opted, sometimes unwillingly, as a particular critical concern of postcolonial studies. Yet in the past two decades the political and economic contexts of South Asian Anglophone fiction, its material circulation and its inter/national audiences have changed dramatically, often in ways that challenge established critical and theoretical assumptions about the genre. The proposed seminar series seeks to address the transformed contexts and concerns of recent South Asian fiction exploring, in the process, the importance of these writings to our sense of the contemporaneity of world literatures in English. The seminar series, which will run from November 2011 to April 2012, will enable established critics of South Asian literature to locate and reflect on new concerns and developments in the field, and their implications for postcolonial reading practices. These include the effects of Indian liberalisation and economic growth post-1991 on the cultural geographies of the region; globalisation and changes in South Asian diaspora cultures; the representation of political tensions in South Asia after 9/11; new subaltern narratives; environmental and biotechnological issues; changing terrains of the popular; and transforming narrative and linguistic developments. Seminar ScheduleSeminars are on Wednesdays from 17.30 -19.00 November 16th December 7th December 14th January 25th February 8th February 22nd March 7th March 21st
If you would like further information, please contact Alex Tickell (Director of Open University’s Postcolonial Literatures Research Group).
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