This course will examine how ideas of English identity and nationhood have been transformed by postwar migration and diaspora, as well as by political and cultural contestations over race, racial representation, and the legacies of the British Empire. We will ask how the decline and overthrow of Britain’s influence and rule in the colonies after WWII gave rise to not just postcolonial nation-states overseas, but also to a postcolonial England. Our focus will be on the discourses and cultural production of migrant and diasporic communities. But we will also consider the historical context in which our authors and artists worked, and the various forms of imperial amnesia and nostalgia, as well as nativist and xenophobic political currents, against which they struggled. We will examine literary texts, cultural criticism, and film, music and visual culture from the early postwar period (Windrush Generation and the Suez Crisis) up to the present. Authors we might study include Sam Selvon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Bhanu Kapil, and Kamila Shamsie, with films by Isaac Julien and Hanif Kureishi. We will also make use of London’s historical and cultural offerings, with a possible trip to the Black Cultural Archives, among other outings. (Fiction)