Language, Empire, and Power

Undergraduate / Graduate

What does it mean to write in the language of empire? And what possibilities, aesthetic and ethical, emerge from the refusal, remaking, and reclaiming of the imperial language? This course examines how writers from different post-imperial contexts negotiate identity and literary belonging through the choice of language. It brings together four authors who made this question central to their work: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o from Kenya, Arundthati Roy from India, Yuri Andrykhovych from Ukraine, and Dubravka Ugrešić from Croatia. Through close reading and engagement with critical theory, we situate their works within their specific historical, social, and political conditions. By placing postcolonial, post-Soviet, and post-dependence critical frameworks in dialogue, we ask what these imperial aftermaths share and where comparisons break down.