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Course Syllabus

Course Syllabus


 

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2024/2025

Colonial and Post-Colonial Political Thought and Policy

Type: Mago-Lego
Delivered by: School of Politics and Governance
When: 1 module
Open to: students of all HSE University campuses
Instructors: Ksenia Gerasimova
Language: English
ECTS credits: 3

Course Syllabus

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Abstract

This course surveys 500+ years of world history through the prism of encounters between “the West” and “the Rest,” beginning with the Age of Great Discoveries, including the famous trip of Christopher Columbus and the arrival of the Portuguese explorer Fernão Peres de Andrade in Ming China in 1517 till modern days. It provides deeper focus on the buzz words, such as colonialism, empirialism, decolonization, biocolonialism and neocolonialism. They appear in the literature and current media reports, but can the students properly address them? After the course it will be for sure. The course is of academic nature to provide the students with an opportunity to study in depth the classic texts that are key to understanding the development of the postcolonial and anti-colonial thought and explain the postcolonial discourse of international development.Conceptually, the course aims: 1) to analyze the main discourses that characterized the self-narration(s) that European colonial school built on their hegemonic world-view and actions; 2) to explore differences between postcolonial and decolonial discourses, focusing on the use of concepts such as civilization, colonization, sovereignty, hegemony, nationalism; 3) to introduce narrations as products of specific context(s) marked by peculiar conflicts/debates and 4) introduce students to a critical theory of historical geography and cultural representations. The final learning goal of this course is the writing of a full-length research paper based on a combination of primary and secondary sources. All the prior assignments, alongside individual supervision and consultation with the instructor, will guide the students on their path to the successful completion of this intellectually challenging task. The last two classes will be invited speakers from Thailand and Kenya.Learning Outcomes By the end of the course the student will be able to: