Courses

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. (Seminar). This course focuses on plots of empire in the British novel of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It examines not only how empire was represented but also how the novel form gave visibility to the strategies of empire and also showed the tacit purposes, contradictions, and anxieties of British imperialism. The seminar is structured around the themes of: the culture of secrecy; criminality and detection; insurgency, surveillance, and colonial control; circulation and exchange of commodities; messianism and political violence. Specifically, the course will focus on how the culture of secrecy that accompanied imperial expansion defined the tools of literary imagination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While most studies of culture and imperialism examine the impact of colonial expansion on the geography of narrative forms, this seminar looks more closely at the language of indirection in English novels and traces metaphors and symbols to imperialisms culture of secrecy. It begins with the simple observation that both colonizers and colonized felt the need to transmit their communications without having their messages intercepted or decoded. Translated into elusive Masonic designs and prophecy (as in Kim), codes of collective action (as in Sign of Four), or extended dream references (as in The Moonstone), the English novel underscores the exchange of information as one of the key activities of British imperialism. Forcing hidden information into the open also affects the ways that colonial ‘otherness is defined (as in The Beetle). How espionage and detection correlate with impenetrability and interpretation will be one among many themes we will examine in this course. The seminar will supplement courses in the nineteenth-century English novel, imperialism and culture, and race, gender, and empire, as well as provide a broad basis for studies of modernism and symbolism. Readings include Rudyard Kipling, Kim and Short Stories; Arthur Conan Doyles Sign of Four; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Richard Marsh, The Beetle; RL Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Rider Haggard, She; Haggard, King Solomons Mines; Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent. Course requirements: One oral presentation; two short papers, each 4-5 pages (double-spaced); and a final paper, 7-10 pages (double-spaced). Application instructions: E-mail Professor Viswanathan ([email protected]) with the subject heading Imperialism and Cryptography seminar. In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.