This course examines the postcolonial bildungsroman, in order to pose questions of the genre about geopolitics and literary afterlives. Described as a "coming of age" narrative, the bildungsroman has historically tended towards a Eurocentric framework of exploration and discovery in articulating the process of the protagonist's maturation. However, instead of the triumphant consolidation of the self that is typical of the traditional bildungsroman, the postcolonial bildungsroman foregrounds the fractures that inhere with the attempt to consolidate both postcolonial selves as well as postcolonial collectives. Situated against the convulsions of anticolonial and antiracist movements, what self-discovery is afforded to those who have already been "discovered" and circumscribed by the European gaze? What does a "coming of age" narrative look like against the simultaneous creation of new nations, a process often steeped in blood that is seemingly the inauguration of further cycles of trauma and stasis? Finally, how far can the generic category of the bildungsroman hold till it begins to fracture under the pressures of newer demands of political and literary representation? This course will grapple with some of these questions, examining certain key theories of the bildungsroman as well as literary examples of the genre culled from diverse sites, authored by Franco Moretti, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Derek Walcott, Sara Suleri, and Shyam Selvadurai.