Decolonising Wuthering Heights

A new scholarly book with Brontë-related content:

Decolonising the Literature Curriculum
Edited by Charlotte Beyer

Palgrave MacMillan (Part of the Teaching the New English book series (TENEEN))

ISBN: 978-3-030-91288-8

This book explores pedagogical approaches to decolonising the literature curriculum through a range of practical and theoretically-informed case studies. Although decolonising the curriculum has been widely discussed in the academe and the media, sustained examinations of pedagogies involved in decolonising the literature at university level are still lacking in English and related subjects. This book makes a crucial contribution to these evolving discussions, presenting current and critically engaged pedagogical scholarship on decolonising the literature curriculum. Offering a broad spectrum of accessible chapters authored by experienced national and international academics, the book is structured into two parts, Texts and Contexts, presenting case studies on decolonising the literature curriculum which range from the undergraduate classroom, university writing centres, through to the literary doctorate.

The book includes the chapter:

Decolonising Wuthering Heights in the Semi-peripheral Classroom

by Ana Cristina Mendes 

pp 115–132

Abstract

Considering the three dimensions of adaptation as (1) act and process, (2) heuristic tool, and (3) political possibility, what can be distinctive about teaching English canonical texts through adaptations in the semi-peripheral classroom? To address this question, the chapter proposes ways to decolonise Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in the undergraduate semi-peripheral classroom. Framed by an inter-imperial perspective on the Atlantic slave trade, our decolonised reading of the novel firmly places Heathcliff in the colonial countryside of Yorkshire, and examines the visual translations of the racialising tropes associated with this character across three screen adaptations: (1) the 1939 film directed by William Wyler; (2) the 2009 two-episode miniseries directed by Coky Giedroyc; and (3) the 2011 film directed and written by Andrea Arnold.