Sweatshops, Sex workers, and Asylum Seekers: World Literature and Visual Culture after Globalisation

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• reflect on the relationship between texts and contexts
• evaluate different critical approaches to the subject
• trace the representation of globalisation in different places, contexts and cultural forms
• read confidently and critically across a range of literary, theoretical and critical texts

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the location of these texts within wider national and global contexts
• the interactions between recent literary and cultural texts and ideas of globalisation
• key issues within the secondary criticism on this topic
• the key texts studied, including issues of language, form, and genre
• the contribution made by these texts to an understanding of migration and neoliberalism

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• debate topical issues with rigour
• Write with conviction and care.

The module begins with readings of key essays on world literature and globalisation and a screening of Stephanie Black's film Life and Debt. We then proceed to read a variety of novels, films, and related texts from the contemporary period, enabling you to examine the ways in which narratives of sweatshops, sex work, and asylum are rendered in a range of forms and genres. Topics of study will include: sex work and homeworking in recent South Asian fiction; asylum and sex work in postcolonial fiction and film; narratives of austerity in postcolonial film; oil extraction in recent West African fiction; and narratives of disaster capitalism in contemporary world literature. The precise syllabus will vary from year to year, but indicative texts include: Novels Monica Ali, Brick Lane Indra Sinha, Animal’s People Abdulrazak Gurnah, By the Sea Nuruddin Farah, Gifts Helon Habila, Oil on Water Films Stephanie Black (dir.), Life and Debt John Schlesinger (dir.), Midnight Cowboy Stephen Frears (dir.), Dirty Pretty Things Abderrahmane Sissako (dir.), Bamako Content Information Note: Some of the texts on this module contain content, language and representation about matters such as race, sexuality, non-consensual relationships, gender, poverty, and violence. This can be derogatory, inappropriate, abusive, and harmful. We fully acknowledge that encountering such content and representations can be upsetting. We want to be clear that the presence of such content within some of the texts we study is not an endorsement of that language, content or representation. These texts are included so that we can learn to critique these representations and to acknowledge the histories of which they are a part.

This module is taught via weekly one-hour lectures and seminars. This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible contact hour, 5 in total, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.