This course introduces students to fictional and other cultural perspectives from the postcolonial world. This semester, we will focus on selected texts from postcolonial Asia. Our course will be structured around the concept of the nation--what Benedict Anderson has famously called “an imagined community.” We will explore this concept by reading and discussing texts representing the complexities of imagined communities in or from Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, Viet Nam, and Tibet. We will ask: why should these ideas and texts matter to us now?

Students are expected to attend regularly, to read with care and curiosity, and to bring an open mind to course assignments and class discussion. We will reflect on our previously held commonsense ideas and test them against our course readings. Please note that while this course extends some of the ideas that were developed in our section of Fiction I in Fall 2010, it is also designed to be coherent as a stand-alone course. No prior knowledge of postcolonial studies is required.