SDG Detail

ENGLISH 204 : Pacific Literature in English

Undergraduate course

Project description

An introduction to contemporary Pacific Literature exploring texts from canonical Pacific writers to spoken word performance poets. Texts will be examined in light of recent theories in Indigenous Writing Studies, with a focus on crossings of cultural and creative borders, diaspora and identity. This course considers recent Pacific literature written in English by authors whose work is characterised by multiple crossings of cultural, political, gendered and geographical borders�crossings particularly acute for writers who are connected in some way by genealogical and ancestral ties to M?ori and Pacific communities, but write from other places.

Year 2022

Location New Zealand

Organization University of Auckland

Project aims

Project outcome

By the end of this course, students will be able to: Demonstrate a critical understanding of ways in which the theory and practice of postcolonial writing has been conceptualised and understood by writers and scholars working in this field (Capability 1.1) Critically evaluate a range of genres, including poetry, short fiction, and young adult fiction (Capability 4.2) Understand and explain a range of colonial and postcolonial discourses from the Pacific, and will have explored issues arising from colonisation, independence, and diasporic migration in these areas. (Capability 6.1) Demonstrate how to contextualise postcolonial writing in terms of its historical and geographical specificities, and develop their knowledge and understanding of selected themes, enabling them to define and carry out an independent piece of research. (Capability 6.2) Articulate and demonstrate key methodological issues and problems of literary and cultural analysis, enabling them to undertake independent research with confidence. (Capability 2.3)