ENGL30A1: Legality and Justice in South Asian Literature and Film

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• To examine some of the ways in which the concepts of legality, crime, justice, and human rights have been addressed in South Asian literature and film.
• To unpack what the selected works, including literary fiction, crime novels, and films reveal about the workings of legal structures in colonial as well as postcolonial contexts.
• To grapple with the relationship between legal, social and religious norms, as depicted in the chosen works, all the while remaining sensitive to the intersection of identity markers such as gender, race, sexuality, class, caste, and nationality.
• To explore the relationship between the concepts of legality and illegality and the poetics of the primary works, with a particular focus on genre, language, and narrative mode.
• To engage with debates around censorship laws and informal censorship practices, not only as they are depicted within specific literary and cinematic works but also in relation to their reception.

• This module focuses on South Asian authors and contemporary South Asian films.
• It engages with a range of literary and film genres and combines close analysis of literary and cinematic works with attention to appropriate legal, sociological, and historical writings.
• It pays close attention the poetics of the primary works, with a particular focus on genre, language, and narrative mode.
• It incorporates a wide variety of theoretical approaches including, but not limited to: postcolonial theory and criticism, legal thought, feminist theory, film theory, queer studies, history, and sociology.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will gain a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the ways in which contemporary South Asian literature and cinema bring to the fore the complex relationship between legality, identity, human rights, crime, and justice.
• Students will develop a firm grasp of the relevant literary and socio-legal frameworks, allowing them to address questions pertaining to crime and justice in colonial and postcolonial settings.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and interpretation of texts and films
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts, films and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and cinema and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts and cinematic works
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature and cinema
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary and film studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

Key Skills:

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of assessed work
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts and films, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary and cinematic creation and the close reading and analysis of texts and films; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the assessment may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second assessment.
• Before the first essay, students will have an individual consultation session (15 minutes) in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting. This session will not be centrally timetabled, and will be arranged via the seminar leader and student.

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