Year: Second
Part of the year: Half Year 2
Module Leader: Jenni Ramone
Assessments:
Keywords:
migration; race; African and Caribbean migration to Britain; postcolonial theory; Britishness; identity; colonial history; publishing and Black writers; the literary canon; activism; black consciousness
Description:
On this module you will engage with a wide range of texts (including novels, films, essays, short stories, and poetry) written by black writers in Britain, from 1948 to the present day. 1948 is often used as a marker of black British writing as it was the year the Empire Windrush arrived at Southampton dock, the beginning of the migration of people from the British Empire territories in the Caribbean to the UK. The module begins by exploring the ways these writers depicted migration and migrant identity, as well as considering later migration journeys undertaken by black people from postcolonial locations in the Caribbean and Africa. We will consider the ways in which texts represent space and place (particularly London), how race is represented and encountered, activism and black consciousness, issues of race, class, and sexuality, and the ways in which the publishing industry mediates black writers’ representation in the literary marketplace. You will learn to apply a range of relevant postcolonial theories, and to consider the texts in theory social, political, and historical contexts. You will undertake close reading alongside this, to consider the impact of form and style.
Prerequisites: N/A
Useful Information:
Postcolonial Studies; Modern and Contemporary Literature; Culture; Politics; 1948-present
Buchi Emecheta, Second-Class Citizen (Heinemann, 1994 [1974]) [NOVEL]
Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman (Hamish Hamilton, 2013) [NOVEL]
Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House (Bloomsbury, 2007) [NOVEL]
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River (Vintage, 2006 [1993]) [NOVEL]
James Procter, Writing Black Britain: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Manchester University Press, 2000) [POETRY and SHORT STORIES/EXTRACTS by writers including Grace Nichols, David Dabydeen, George Lamming, Jackie Kay, Wole Soyinka, ER Braithwaite, Louise Bennett, Benjamin Zephaniah, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Marsha Prescod [1948-1998]]
Samuel Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (Penguin, 2006 [1956]) [NOVEL]
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (Penguin, 2001 [2000]) [NOVEL]
Kei Miller, POETRY [2007] (to be distributed via NOW)
Horace Ove, dir., 1976, Pressure [FILM]
Franco Rosso, dir., 1981, Babylon [FILM]
Destiny Ekaragha, dir. 2014, Gone Too Far! [FILM]
Menelik Shabazz, dir., 1981, Burning an Illusion [FILM]
Destiny Ekaragha, , dir., 2012-13 ‘Tight Jeans’; ‘The Park’; ‘The Future WAGS of Great Britain’ (SHORT FILMS available online)
Teaching methods/structure:
Lectures with interactive elements; seminars; workshops; online activities; independent reading and thinking; training in relevant skills including using research resources to locate relevant secondary materials and writing media opinion pieces.
Please view the module specification for the learning outcomes for this module.
Contact details for further queries (module leader):