Response Paper     20%    

Disrupting/confronting settler colonialism is challenging and emotional. It is, therefore, important to acknowledge and work with our own affective reactions to a text and to understand the value of an emotional engagement with literature. Students will choose from either the Week 1 readings or the Week 4 readings and write a short (4-5 pages) essay-style response paper reflecting on what the work means to them (the emphasis should be on the subjective, emotional, gut-reaction to the text). What did the reading make you feel? How, if at all, did the reading challenge you to re-evaluate your own perspectives and/or subject positions in a postcolonial context? The response paper should contain specific examples drawn from the text. 

Week 1 reading insturction:

Primary texts:
Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden,” Imperialism in the Modern World: Sources and Interpretations (1st ed.), Bowman, W., Chiteji, F., & Greene, J.M. (Eds.). Routledge, 2007, pp. 21-22.

Supplementary:
Consider the following (somewhat) present-day apologia/ rationalization of colonial violence:

Black, Conrad. “Canada’s treatment of aboriginals was shameful, but it was not genocide,” National Post, June 6, 2015. Available at: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-canadas-treatment-of-aboriginals-was-shameful-but-it-was-not-genocide