| Lerninhalte |
Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) is an island nation off the coast of India. It has had a turbulent history, including the colonisation by various European powers (Portugal, Netherlands, Great Britain), and violent ethnic and religious conflicts, particularly between Tamil and Sinhalese groups. After gaining independence from the British Empire in 1948, the country's most influential event of the 20th and early 21st centuries was the Sri Lankan Civil War, which lasted from 1983 to 2009 and led to the death, discrimination and displacement of various Sri Lankan Tamils.
In this seminar, we will look at two Sri Lankan novels set in or around the time of the civil war. Both feature gay Tamil men as protagonists. By discussing these texts, we will build on your Grundkurs knowledge to practice, among other things, narrative and genre theory and to apply queer and postcolonial studies' standpoints to literary texts. You will have the chance to formulate your own thesis statements and prepare to write a Hausarbeit.
Please purchase the following novels:
- Shyam Selvadurai, Funny Boy (1994),
- Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022).
Further texts will be made available on Stud.IP. We will start with Selvadurai’s novel, so begin reading that one as soon as you can. |
