SJE3911H
With the advent of colonialism, non-European traditional societies were disrupted. A starting point is an appreciation of the vast array of cultural diversity in the world. The course interrogates how various media have taken up these knowledge systems, presented to the world in the form of texts, films, and educational practices, and examines how colonial education sustains the process of cultural knowledges fragmentation. Our analysis will serve to deepen insights and to develop intellectual skills to cultivate a greater understanding of the dynamics generated through representations and the role of colonial education in sustaining and delineating particular cultural knowledge. We will also explore the various forms of resistance encountered in the process of fragmentation and examine how certain groups of people in various parts of the world have maintained their cultural base, and how this has been commodified, commercialized and romanticized. The course makes use of forms of cultural expressions such as films and critical theories on race, gender, sexuality, and class.