Victorian Empire. In 1876 Queen Victoria famously adopted the title “Empress of India.” Indeed, the Victorian period (1837-1901) is often considered the age of Empire, as Britain strengthened their imperial power throughout the century. British colonies existed on almost every continent and in many island chains, and they controlled (to name a few) islands in the Caribbean, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, and parts of Africa. The phrase “the sun never sets on the British empire” indeed held true. In this course we will explore the history of Victorian empire through reading a selection of novels, travel narratives, scientific, anthropological, ethnographic, and political texts, and analyzing Victorian visual culture (painting and photography), alongside contemporary criticism and theory on Victorian literature and empire, Victorian liberalism, and postcolonialism. We will read literature that engages with colonies and imperial projects in India, Africa, the Pacific, Egypt, and the Caribbean, while exploring themes of race, gender, animality, and sexuality, among others. We will also examine how postcolonial studies intersects with animal studies and ecocriticism. Throughout the course we will ask the following questions:
What ideologies did the British use to justify their imperial project? To what extent did Victorian liberalism justify or critique empire? How did Victorian disciplines such as science and anthropology play a role in imperialism? How did Victorians construct a racialized other? What did it mean to be white and British? How do certain genres work differently to critique or encourage racism and the imperial project? How was racism, sexism, and speciesism an inherent part of empire? How can contemporary postcolonial theory help us interpret Victorian literature? What is the use of history in literary criticism? How can Victorian literature inform today’s imperial projects?
As the course will include a lot of racist white literature, students will take on the task of uncovering a nineteenth-century indigenous counter-narrative to imperial and/or colonial rule to present to the class. The counter-narrative does not have to be a response to British empire; for example, students are encouraged to make use of the archives here in Hawaii and find a narrative that critiques American empire. You will also pick a short representative selection for the class to read.
Learning Outcomes: Understand the relationship between literature and history; professionalization; develop the ability to apply theory to primary texts; become more familiar and comfortable with academic writing; develop written, oral, and research skills; become familiar with a specific period of literary history and a set of theoretical concerns.
Assignments: weekly reading responses (3-4 pages); presentation and short essay on counter-narrative (5-7 pages); final article length research paper (20 pages); participation.
Primary Texts: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847); Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861); R.M. Ballantyne, Coral Island (1858); Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868); Isabella Bird, The Hawaiian Archipelago (1875); Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (1883); Richard Haggard, She (1887); Richard Marsh, The Beetle (1897); Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899). Other shorter primary sources by Edward Macaulay, JS Mill, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Carlyle, R.L. Stevenson, and others.
Possible Secondary and Theoretical Texts (most will be excerpts): Edward Said, Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993); Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak” (1988) and “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” (1985); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes (1992), Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialim (2015); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (1995); Patrick Brantlinger, Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies (2009); V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (1988); Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (1991); Robert Young, Colonial Desire (1995); Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire (1999); Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism (1998); Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes” (1988); Lauren Goodlad, The Victorian Geopolitical Aesthetic (2015); Leela Gandhi, Affective Communities (2006); John Miller, Empire and the Animal Body (2012); Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate (1985); Huggan and Tiffin, Postcolonial Ecocriticism (2010); Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents (2015).