In their book, Theory from the Margins: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa, John and Jean Comaroff suggest that it is the Global South that “affords privileged insight into the workings of the world at large.” The Global South, that is, has long served as the laboratory for increasingly global practices of authoritarian governance, extractive capitalism, inequitable urban planning and education and public health administration. So what can we learn from the writers and cultural theorists from the Global South who have sharply analyzed what appear to be some of the most pressing socio-political, economic, and environmental issues of the day, which are no longer contained to the “margins” of our world? We will focus on theorists who bring to these issues the distinct lenses of anti-colonial thought, decolonial theory, and indigenous epistemologies. Their work will be paired with literary texts which imaginatively represent the legacies of and alternatives to the colonial structures of power, thinking, and being. Authors might include NourbeSe Philip, Rita Indiana, Lauren Beukes, Namwali Serpell, Craig Santos Perez, Alexis Wright. This course will meet online synchronously on Thursdays, 4:20 - 6:50 p.m.