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Course Description

Summary

Contemporary women artists, memoirists and essayists are often uniquely positioned to confront the legacies of empire.  Focusing on the United Kingdom, North America, and the former British colonies, we will examine the construction of women’s identity in multicultural contexts over the past quarter century. Through fiction, memoirs, plays, and film, contemporary women artists work to undo the discourses of xenophobia, resurgent nationalism and racialization, which are often folded into the exploitive practices of neoliberalism. How do these women reclaim postcolonial spaces and confront the vestiges of empire and the double legacy of racism and sexism? We will also look at issues of immigration in the context of the current political climate, paying special attention to the representation of the female immigrant body in public spaces.