Caribbean Spirits, Postcolonial Specters

ENGL

346

Caribbean Spirits, Postcolonial Specters

This course examines the preoccupation with the ghost, the specter, and hauntings in Caribbean literature. Students will sharpen critical thinking, reading, and writing skills by analyzing the ways Caribbean literature confronts historical and contemporary issues of enslavement, colonialism, national/linguistic difference, ethnic cleansing, and migration through the specter, the ghost, and historical hauntings. Caribbean writers reimagine the past through the use of spirits and specters. Certain guiding questions this course asks may include: what haunts the Caribbean, and what sorts of work do ghosts, specters, and/or the dead enact in literature from the archipelago? Why are we drawn to ghosts; what sorts of knowledge do spectral and otherworldly encounters in Caribbean literature offer us? Some other themes include visual technologies versus minor narratives, transnationalism, gender and sexual difference.

All Terms

Undergraduate

Yes

034541