(S) The Decline of the Empire: Heart of Darkness and A Passage to India

This seminar is designed for third year BA students as well as for LikWa and “Staatsexamen” students.

This seminar takes a dual approach to text analysis by focusing on two major but also contested (post-)colonial texts: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and A Passage to India by E. M. Forster. Through close readings of these texts, as well as of their film versions – particularly Apocalypse Now (Redux) –, we will explore the various perspectives on the colonial and postcolonial questions they offer, ranging from racism, feminism and conservatism to profound philosophical issues such as the existence of mankind or the meaning of life. Equally striking is that, on the surface, these texts may appear traditional, and perhaps even conservative. However, in this seminar, we will challenge this interpretation not only through the lens of their film adaptations, which serve as creative intermedial interpretations, but also by applying narratological, deconstructive, and postcolonial approaches in our analyses.