A popular truism in the second half of the nineteenth-century was that the sun never set on the British Empire. This phrase encapsulated the vast amount of territories held by the British and signaled the far reach of its empire. For many, the imperial and colonizing missions were a part of “The White Man’s Burden,” the belief that the British had a moral responsibility to “civilize” those in what they saw as “uncivilized” spaces such as India, Africa, and the Caribbean. For others, this was an attempt to subjugate other peoples and unfairly take their land and resources. As such, the British Empire is a space for examining the complicated politics of the nineteenth century, and issues such as race, nationality, liberalism, and gender. This class will explore in detail how major novelists and thinkers responded to and represented ideologies perpetuated by the British Empire and examine the politics of what was ultimately a project full of negative ideas about race, gender, and non-Western cultures.
Readings: We will read novels by Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre), Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), and Rider Haggard (King Solomon’s Mines); postcolonial theory by Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Mary Louise Pratt, among others; travel narratives by Isabella Lucy Bird and Mary Kingsley; selected literary criticism on our primary texts; and selected non-fiction texts on the Victorian empire. These readings will be supplemented by indigenous counter-narratives to the British empire. Finally, we will examine how the British empire is represented today, by watching the 2017 film Victoria and Abdul.
Assignments: This course is writing intensive so expect to do a fair amount of short writings and a significant research project. Students will also participate in a group project.