LATC-UA 600 Topics: Contemporary Caribbean Women Writers

In this course we will read contemporary feminist authors from the Anglophone and Spanish speaking Caribbean so that we may begin to think comparatively about the legacy of British and Spanish colonialism in the region. We seek to examine how the distinct colonial trajectories and independence movements have shaped “modern” conceptions of female identity and sexuality. The British and Spanish Crown proceed in their colonial missions in the Caribbean according to very distinct racial ideologies and theories of human subjectivity. Meanwhile, independence movements against such very theories and ideologies nevertheless deployed their own patriarchal models of “becoming-citizen.” Complicating matters further, the United States’ repeated intervention in the region once countries were liberated from British and Spanish rule has most often meant nominal independence and repressive dictatorships for these Caribbean nations. In the novels, memoirs, short stories, and poetry we will be reading, these feminist authors revisit and revise the trauma of colonialism and neocolonialism, the origin-stories of patriarchal nationalisms deployed by independence leaders, and the liberatory narrative of neoliberal “development” so often imposed by the West democracies as a solution to the region’s presumed “underdevelopment.” These novels, memoirs, short stories, and poems are all “postcolonial” because they provide, in one form or another, feminist critique of colonialism, of discourses of civilization and barbarity, of nationalism and development. This comparative, postcolonial approach will require that we supplement our literary readings with various kinds of secondary materials, including Caribbean history, postcolonial theory, literary criticism and development theory. The goal of this course is neither to provide an exhaustive history of the Caribbean nor of its literary production. Rather, the goal is to come to an understanding of how modern Caribbean identities of women in the have been formed by long historical processes of racial and gendered representation.

College of Arts & Science, Latin American-Caribbean Studies Department | 4 units | Class# 10930

*this course can be used to satisfy Gallatin’s Humanities and Global requirements with a Course Review Request