HIST202.303 Colonialism and Culture in Modern Europe

Fall 2004

Th 1:30-4:30

Instructor: Jennifer Sessions

Course Description

The wave of decolonization that swept through the non-Western world in the 20^th century did not end the history of European imperialism. Europe’s colonial powers and their former colonies continue to grapple with the legacies of empire, and the ideas that underpinned European colonialism continue to shape our world in ways that deserve our careful attention. This course will focus on the cultural history of European colonialism in Africa and Asia since 1750, approaching this study from the position that understanding how cultural representations shaped European colonial expansion is of vital importance to our present. We will read both primary and secondary sources to explore the ways that Europeans constructed, denigrated and appropriated aspects of non-European cultures to help them define their own identities, and how non-Europeans responded to, participated in, and resisted European domination. Topics for discussion will include Orientalism, scientific racism, representations of empire, colonial cultures of rule, missionaries in the empire, colonial consumption, anti-imperial and nationalist movements, and post-colonial migrations.

Assignments

Because one of the main goals of the seminar is for each of you to engage with the readings and the issues that they raise each week, participation is an important part of your grade. Attendance is mandatory, and absence will be penalized except if you have a written medical excuse.

Each student will lead discussion once during the semester. Presenters should meet with me during the preceding week and post discussion questions on Blackboard the day before the class for which they are responsible. The discussion leader will give a short (10-minute) presentation on the readings to start off, and then direct the group discussion.

Three short response papers (3-4 pp.) will ask you to think about the readings we discuss together in seminar. Response papers should focus in on a theme or question raised by a week’s readings, and discuss that angle of those readings in a critical fashion. One response paper must be for a week in which the student has led discussion.

In a final research paper (12-15 pp.), students will explore a topic of their choice through primary and secondary sources. Each of you will meet with me at mid-semester to discuss your topic choice, then submit an annotated bibliography, a thesis statement, and a preliminary outline before turning in the paper itself at the end of the semester.

Grades

Grades will be broken down as follows:

Class participation 30% (includes presentation 5%)

3 Response papers 30%

Final paper 40%

Deadlines

All written assignments will be due at the beginning of seminar, unless otherwise indicated. Late work will be penalized 1/3 of a letter grade per day, beginning the day of the missed deadline, unless you provide a written medical excuse.

Response papers should be brought to class on the day that we are discussing the readings about which you have written

Due dates for the final paper are as follows (these are also noted on the syllabus):

10/18-10/22 Meetings with me about topics (sign-up on my office door)

11/18 Annotated bibliography due (primary and secondary sources)

12/2 Thesis statement & preliminary outline due

Readings

The following books are available for purchase at the Penn Book Center, at 130 S. 34th St.:

Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Chapel Hill: Duke UP, 1996)

Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996)

Jean & John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution I: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991)

Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France & West Africa, 1905-1930 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000)

Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness (New York: Penguin, 1999).

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (New York: Harvest Books, 1984)

Patricia Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000)

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992)

Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage ed. (New York: Vintage, 1994)

Additional readings are in a photocopied bulkpack and on the Web. The coursepack is available at Campus Copy, at 3907 Walnut St. Links to electronic resources can be found on the Blackboard site for this course, and you can read on-line and print as you wish (though I would strongly suggest bringing a paper copy to class). A few readings, as well as copies of the films for the last week are on reserve in Rosengarten.

Key for readings on the syllabus:

* = coursepack

@ = electronic resource on Blackboard site

R = Rosengarten Reserve

SCHEDULE OF READINGS & ASSIGNMENTS

9/9, Introductions

Background: European empire from the 18^th to 19^th centuries.

Definitions: What is colonialism? What is culture? Where is the power of culture?

9/16, Frameworks: Knowledge, Discourse & Colonialism

** SIGN-UP FOR PRESENTATIONS & RESPONSE PAPERS

Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, chs. 2-3, pp. 16-75

Edward Saïd, Orientalism, introduction and ch. 1, “The Scope of Orientalism,” 1-110

(*) TERENCE RANGER, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition, Canto ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 211-262.

I. CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS

9/23, The Science of Colonialism

George Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, prologue-ch. 3, 6 (pp. 1-109, 186-237)

(@) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), chs. 3-4

(@) Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), selection

(@) Frances Galton, “The Comparative Worth of Different Races,” Hereditary Genius (1869, 2^nd ed. 1892), pp. 336-350

9/30, Travel & Exploration: Writing Colonial Space

Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, ch. 2-3, 9 (p. 15-68, 201-216)

(*) Patrick Brantlinger, “Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Mythology of the Dark Continent,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (1985): 166-203

(@) Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (1874), Introduction, ch. 3, 5

(*) Henry Morton Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, 2 vols. (1878, rpt. London: Greenwood, 1969), 1: 1-28, 2:126-127, 194-195, 223-283.

10/7, Empire on Display: Visual Arts & Architecture

(*) Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 33-59

(*) Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991), selections TBA

Patricia Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris, Introduction, chs. 1-2, 5, 7

Have a look at the images in:

(R) Christine Peltre, Orientalism in Art (New York: Abbeville, 1998)

(R) William Rubin, ed., “Primitivism" in Modern Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exhibition catalog, 2 vols. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984)

(R) Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gaugin (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994)

10/14, The Literature of Imperialism

(@) Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)

Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness (1899), entire

(R) Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin in the Congo (1930), entire

(@) George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” (1936)

II. CULTURAL PRACTICES

** 10/18-10/22, PAPER TOPIC MEETINGS

10/21, Civilizing Missions I: Religion

Jean and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution I: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa, ch. 1 (19-32, 39-48); ch. 2 (75-85); ch. 3 (118-125); chs. 4–6.

(*) Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904), ch. 6

10/28, Civilizing Missions II: Colonial Rule

** NO PRESENTATIONS, LIBRARY SESSION ON HISTORICAL RESEARCH AFTER BREAK.

Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930, entire.

11/4, Civilizing Missions III: Consumption

Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe, Introduction-ch. 5 (pp. 1-165)

(*) Anne McClintock, “Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising,” in Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 207-231.

11/11, Sexuality in the Empire

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, entire

Edward Said, Orientalism, “Orientalist Structures and Restructures,” ch. IV, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, British and French,” 166-197.

11/18, Gender & Colonial Citizenship

** PAPER BIBLIOGRAPHIES DUE IN CLASS

(R) Ann Stoler, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” in Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, pp. 198-237.

Lora Wildenthal, “Race, Gender and Citizenship in the German Colonial Empire,” in Stoler and Cooper, pp. 263-288.

(*) Alice Conklin, “Redefining ‘Frenchness’: Citizenship, Race Regeneration, and Imperial Motherhood in France and West Africa, 1914-40,” in Alice Conklin and Frances Gouda, eds., Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville, VA and London: U Virginia P, 1998), pp. 65-83.

(*) Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens, Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia UP, 2000), parts II & III, pp. 71-170.

11/25, THANKSGIVING BREAK

III. POST-COLONIAL CULTURES: THE END OF EMPIRE?

12/ 2, Voices of the Colonized: The Empire Writes Back

** THESIS STATEMENTS & OUTLINES FOR FINAL PAPERS DUE IN CLASS

Négritude

(*) Poems from Ellen Conroy Kennedy, The Negritude Poets: An Anthology of Translations from the French (New York: Viking, 1975):

- Aimé Césaire, Notes on a Return to the Native Land, abridged (1938)

- Léopold Senghor, “Prayer to the Masks” (1945, “Prayer for Peace” (1948) “Ode for Three Kôras and Balaphong” and “Return of the Prodigal Son” (exerpts, 1945),

- David Diop, “Africa” (c. 1945-1956)

(*) Franz Fanon, “The Negro and Language,” in Black Skin, White Masks, Charles Markmann, trans. and ed. (1952; New York: Grove, 1967), pp. 17-40.

Language & Literature in British Africa

(*) Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language,” in Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1975), 91-103.

(*) Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, “The Language of African Literature,” in Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Portsmouth, NH: Heinneman, 1986), 4-33.

Decolonizing Culture in India

(*) Mahatma Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule) (1908), in Sriman Narayan, ed., The Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 4, The Basic Works, ch. 6-9, 11-14, 18-20 (pp. 118-130, 142-157, 181-201); and “On Literature and Journalism” and exerpts from “Basic Education,” in vol. 6, The Voice of Truth (pp. 303-309, 509- 528).

12/9, Postcolony?: Immigration & Postcolonial Cultures in Europe

Films (CHOOSE ONE):

(R) La Haine (Hate), screenplay & dir. Mathieu Kassovitz (1995)

(R) My Beautiful Laundrette, screenplay Hanif Kureishi, dir. Stephen Frears (1985)

Readings:

(*) Paul Silverstein, “‘Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire?’: French Gangsta Rap and the Critique of State Capitalism,” in Alain-Philippe Durand, Black, blanc, beur: Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture in the Francophone World (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 45-67.

(*) Graham Huggan, “Consuming India,” The Post-Colonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 58-82.

(*) Homi Babha, “How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space, Postcolonial Times and the Trials of Cultural Translation,” in The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 212-235.

FRIDAY 12/17, FINAL PAPERS DUE BY 5PM