ENGL 187 PZ -Counterinsurgency

Institution: Pitzer College

Description: “Insurgency” denotes a revolt against power and is often distinguished from revolutions and rebellions as”irregular warfare” because insurgencies tend to begin on the peripheries of power and mobilize guerilla tactics. Counterinsurgency strategies aim to thwart or contain these revolts, and scholarship across a range of disciplines–military history, sociology, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, among others–traces continuities from colonial campaigns and contemporary strategies deployed in the War on Terror. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will work across literature, history, and politics to track “counterinsurgency” in colonial spaces–from Joseph Conrad’s London and the threat of ‘anarchist’ terrorists, to Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Great Game’ in British India, to the extra-territorial reach of the War on Terror that extends across the globe in Kamila Shamsie’s novels. From different angles and across time and place, we will critically examine “counterinsurgency,” how the term legitimizes or undermines resistance, authorizes (dis)proportional response, and intersects with dispossession or marginalization on the grounds of race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and politics.