492D PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Prochaska)

Meets with History 42 1 A

Topic: Colonialism and Postcolonialism: Transnational and Global Perspectives

 "We human beings long to get the world undei our control and to make other people act just like us.  In the last few centuries, some of us -- variously described as the White Man, the West, the Colonial Powers, Industrial Civilization, the March of Progress -- found out how to do it.  The result is that now many of us all over the world are eating hamburgers at McDonald's."

--Ursula Le Guin 

This course examines how we found out how to do it.  It introduces students to current themes and issues in the history of colonialism and postcolonialism, especially from the perspectives of transnational studies and globalization.  We will consider the degree to which postcolonialism is, as Kwame Anthony Appiah argues, not so much a going beyond colonialism as that which comes after it.  At the same time, it emerges that colonialism is a site particularly "good to think" from transnational and global perspectives.  Wherever possible recent work is bracketed with core studies which together "map" the field.  Among the themes covered, we will pay special attention to gender, culture, and nationalism.  The course is designed as an introduction to the Ph.D. field in colonialism and postcolonialism, and as such it is meant to help students prepare for qualifying examinations.