Syllabus
This module will run in 2026/27.
All readings for Term 1 (and most for Term 2) should be available through the library or through Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. You may wish to purchase The Secret Garden, however.
I am currently updating the syllabus and Talis Aspire list for Term 2.
FOR ADVANCE READING:
TERM ONE:CONFESSIONS OF A THUG
FOR WEEK ONE OF TERM 1, 2026/2027: PLEASE READ THE INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER 1 ONLY. THE OXFORD CLASSICS EDITION IS AVAILABLE THROUGH THE LIBRARY WEBSITE.TERM TWO:
NOLI MI TANGERE
THIS IS ALSO A LONG NOVEL (AND IS PLACED AFTER READING WEEK FOR THIS REASON). YOU MAY WANT TO READ THIS NOVEL OVER THE WINTER HOLIDAYS.Outline Syllabus for 2026/27
Term 1: Imperialism and Culture in South Asia
Week 1: Introduction:
Required Reading:
- Philip Meadows Taylor, Confessions of a ThugLink opens in a new window (Introduction and Chapter 1 Only)
Week 2: Theory and Reading Practices for the Global Nineteenth Century
Required Critical Reading:
- Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, Amy R. Wong, "Undisciplining Victorian Studies," LA Review of Books10 July 2020. Available at https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/undisciplining-victorian-studies/
- Elleke Boehmer, "Imperialism and Textuality," Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 13-57.
- Carolyn Betensky, "Casual Racism in Victorian Literature," Victorian Literature and Culture47.4 (2019): 723-751.
Accompanying Literary Texts:
- Toru Dutt, "Our Casuarina Tree" in Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan[Available from the Library via the Empire Online database or from the ebook of Mary Ellis Gibson's anthology Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India.]
- Rudyard Kipling, "Mandalay" I Available online]
Week 3: The 1857 'Indian Mutiny' I: The Immediate Response
Required Reading:
- Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, The Perils of Certain English Prisoners.
Download the scanned versionLink opens in a new window of the original owned by Dr Forman.
Or full text available through the library
Required Critical Reading
- Philippa Levine, "Britain in India," The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset" 53-82.
- Alex Tickell, "The Perils of Certain English Prisoners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and the Limits of Colonial Government." Nineteenth-century Literature 67.4 (2013): 457-489.
Recommended Critical Reading:
- Lillian Nayder, "Class Consciousness and the Indian Mutiny: The Collaborative Fiction of 1857" in Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Victorian Authorship.
- Maria K. Bachman, "Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and the Perils of Imagined Others" in Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia 101-123.
- Grace Moore, "A Tale of Three Revolutions: Dickens's Response to the Sepoy Rebellion." Dickens and Empire 113-133.
Week 4: The 'Indian Mutiny' II: Later 19th Century Responses
Required Reading:
- Alfred Tennyson, "The Defence of Lucknow"Link opens in a new window
- Karl Marx, "The British Rule in India"Link opens in a new window
Karl Marx, "The Future Results of the British Rule in India"Link opens in a new window - G. A. Henty, "A Pipe of Mystery"Link opens in a new window [Original periodical version published in Union Jack vol. 2, issue 52, 23 Dec. 1880 available via the Library's Gale Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals database.]
- Herbert Hayens, "The Indian Mutiny" in For the Colours: A Boy's Book of the ArmyLink opens in a new window
Required Critical Reading:
-
Priti Joshi, "1857; or, Can the Indian 'Mutiny' Be Fixed?" Available from the BRANCH Collective at https://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=priti-joshi-1857-or-can-the-indian-mutiny-be-fixed
Week 5: Drama and Resistance
- Dion Boucicault, Jessie Brown, or the Relief of Lucknow.
- Available for download at https://archive.org/details/jessiebrownorrel00bouc
- Dinabandhu Mitra, Nil Dirpan, or the Indigo Planting Mirror: A Drama
Required Critical Reading:
- Neil Hultgren, "Jessie Brown as Imperial Propaganda," in "Introduction," Melodramatic Imperial Writing: From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes 28-32 (online edition).
- Sukanya Banarjee, "Who or What, Is Victorian?: Ecology, Indigo, and the Transimperial,"
Recommended Critical Reading:
- Sourit Bhattacharya, "World-ecology, commodity modernity, and world-literature in Victorian India: Dinabandhu Mitra’s Nil Darpan (1860)" in In Search of Creative Commons: Crisis, Catastrophe, and Responsive Literature in India.
Week 6: Reading Week
NO SEMINARS THIS WEEK.
Week 7: The "First" Indian Novel
Required Reading:
- Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Rajmohan's Wife (1864).
Required Critical Reading:
- Sukanya Banerjee, "Troubling Conjugal Loyalties: The First Indian Novel in English and the Transimperial Framework of Sensation," Victorian Literature and Culture 42 (2014): 475-489.
-
Supriya Chaudhuri, "Beginnings: Rajmohan's Wife and the Novel in India" in A History of the Indian Novel in English 31-44.
Week 8: Women and Conduct
Required Reading:
- Cornelia Sorabji, "Love and Death"
- Cornelia Sorabji, "Draupadi and the Great Game"
- E.F. Chapman, "Cornelia Sorabji," Sketches of Some Distinguished Indian WomenLink opens in a new window (1891) 113-139.
- Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper [Available online via the Library.]
[Please read:
I. Duties of the Mistress
VI. Duties of the Servants
XXX. Advice to the Cook
XLII. Native Dishes]
Required Critical Reading:
- Priya Joshi, "The Circulation of Fiction in Indian Libraries, ca. 1835-1901," In Another Country 35-92.
Week 9: Writing and Resistance
Required Reading:
-
Sarojini Naidu, "Indian Dancers" and "The Royal Tombs of Golconda." (Short poems)
- Sri Aurobindo, "The Object of Passive Resistance" in Boehmer, Empire Writing.
-
Dadabhai Naoroji, "East India" (1893 speech in Parliament)
-
Dutt, "The Republic of Orissa"
- Pandita Ramabai, "The Cry of Indian Women"
Required Critical Reading
- Isabel Hofmeyr, "Printing Cultures in the Indian Ocean" in Gandhi's Printing Press 30-45 and notes.
Week 10: India and the Natural World
Required Reading:
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden.
Required Critical Reading:
- Elizabeth Chang, "Strange Country Gardens," Chapter 3 of Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Nineteenth Century.
Recommended Critical Reading:
- Jessica Straley, "Home Grown: Frances Hodgson Burnett and the Cultivation of Female Evolution" in Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children's Literature.
Term 2: British Engagements with East and Southeast Asia
Week 1: Theorizing British Engagements with the "Far East"
Criticism:
-
Di Cotofan Wu, "Shifting Images of Queen Victoria in Late Qing China: Official Histories, Diplomacy, and Print Culture in a Fragmented Empire (1839–1897)"
- Elizabeth ChangLink opens in a new window, China in The Encyclopedia of Victorian LiteratureLink opens in a new window Eds. Felluga, Dino Franco, Pamela K. Gilbert and Linda K. Hughes. Vol. I, 250-52.
- Anna Maria Jones, "Transnational Neo-Victorian Studies: Notes on the Possibilities and Limitations of a Discipline" in Literature Compass 15.7 (2018).
- Josephine McDonagh and Briony Wickes, "The Nineteenth-century Opium Complex: From Thomas Love Peacock to Sherlock Holmes," Literature & History 29.1 (May 2020): 3-18.
Accompanying Literary Texts:
- Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Man with the Twisted Lip"
- Yana Toboso, Black Butler vol. 4 (optional)
Week 2: China Tales
- Julian Mitchell, "Bacillus Anti-Cathay," The Western Mail, Christmas Number, December 1910. Available at Trove Australian periodical databaseLink opens in a new window.
- Grant Allen [J. Arbuthnot Wilson], "Mr. Chung" in Belgravia 49, issue 196 (Feb 1883): 67-80. [Online from the Library via British Periodicals Collection I: 1866 to 1899 database.]
- Sarah Grand, "Ah Man" in The Woman at Home 1894: 24-30
- Liese Boehm, "Mr. Wrong," Temple Bar 108 (May/Aug 1896)
Required Critical Reading:
- Klaudia Hiu Yen Lee, "Contested Boundaries, Spatiality, and Short Fiction in the South China Morning Post, 1904-1907." Victorian Periodicals Review 50.1 (2017): 157-171.
Recommended Fiction:
- "The Amorous Chinaman,"Queensland Figaro and Punch28 Nov 1885. Available at Trove Australian periodical databaseLink opens in a new window.
Week 3: Writing the Boxer Rebellion: An Anglophone Chinese Perspective?
- Robert Louis, "The Curse of China"
- NG Hing Shang, The Upheaval in Far Cathay. Available from archive.orgLink opens in a new window.
Recommended Critical Reading:
- Ross G. Forman, "Peking Plots." China and the Victorian Imagination 98-129.
Recommended Supplementary Reading (Graphic Novel):
- Gene Luen Yang, Boxers.
Week 4: The "Opening Up" of Japan
-
Lafcadio Hearn, "The Story of Mimi Nashi Hoichi" ["Hoici the Earless"] in Japanese Tales of Lafcadio Hearn 52-56.
- Okakura Kazuko, "The Tea-Room" in The Book of Tea 56-69.
- Natsune Soseki, "The Tower of London" in The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London, trans. Damian Flanagan.
- Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying."
Required Critical Reading:
- Grace Lavery, "Introduction," Quaint Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan, 3-33.
Recommended Critical Reading:
- William S. Rodner, "Japan in Britain," Edwardian London through Japanese Eyes: The Art and Writing of Yoshio Markino, 1897-1915 15-34.
Week 5: The Japan of Pure Invention
- W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, The MikadoLink opens in a new window
- A.B. Mitford, selected stories from Tales of Old JapanLink opens in a new window. Available online at Project GutenbergLink opens in a new window and archive.orgLink opens in a new window.
Please read:
"Preface"
"The Forty-seven Ronins"
"The Eta Maiden and the Hatamoto"
Required Critical Reading:
- Joseph McLaughlin, '"The Japanese Village" and the Metropolitan Construction of Modernity'Link opens in a new window
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7: The Making of the Philippines
- José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere*
*This is a long novel, so you are advised to start it early.
Required Critical Reading:
- Benedict Anderson, 'The First Filipino', from Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of ComparisonsLink opens in a new window
Recommended Reading:
- Juan de Castro, 'En qué idioma escribe Ud.?': Spanish, Tagolog, and Identity in José Rizal's Noli Me TangereLink opens in a new window
Week 8: Situating British Imperialism in Southeast Asia
- Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, Chapter 2: "Singapore" and Chapter 40: "The Races of Man in the Malay Archipelago."
[Available online via the Library website.] - Bram Stoker, "The Red Stockade." Download at www.bramstoker.orgLink opens in a new window.
- G.A. Henty, "In the Hands of the Malays" in In the Hands of the Malays and Other Stories at archive.orgLink opens in a new window.
- Anna Leonowenes, from The English Governess at the Siamese Court. Please read: Chapter 1: "On the Threshold" and Chapter 15: "The City of Bangkok."
Available at archive.orgLink opens in a new window.
Recommended Critical Reading:
- Sud Chonchirdsin, "The Ambivalent Attitudes of the Siamese Elite towards the West during the Reign of King Chungalongkorn, 1868-1910," South East Asia Research 17.3 (2009): 433-456.
Recommended Primary Reading:
- Thomas Stamford Raffles,The History of Java, Vol.1, Chapter 2.
Week 9: Popular Fiction at the Heart of Empire
- Richard Marsh, The Joss [Available online through archive.orgLink opens in a new window].
- Gertrude Donaldson. "A Vanished Idol." The English Illustrated Magazine Feb. 1909.
Week 10: "The Female Globetrotter" in Southeast Asia
- Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither.
Required Critical Reading:
- Eddie Tay, "Discourses of Difference: Isabella Bird, Emily Innes and Florence Caddy," Colony, Nation, and Globalisation: Not at Home in Singaporean and Malaysian Literature 31-43.