Module ENGL3791: Black Lives, pre-1900

Department: English Studies

ENGL3791: Black Lives, pre-1900

Prerequisites

• • At least one of the following modules: Introduction to Drama (ENGL 1011), Introduction to the Novel (ENGL 1061), Introduction to Poetry (ENGL 1071).

Corequisites

• • None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To critically investigate the literary, historical and cultural contexts that defined representations of racial identity, class and gender in the pre-1900 period.
• To examine a range of genres, including contemporary visual, kinaesthetic and printed sources.
• To introduce students to the relevant debates about racial theory and investigate the broader socio-political and literary contexts that underpinned the semiotics of slavery.
• To introduce students to key digital resources such as Eighteenth-Century Collections Online; Freedom on the Move; African Diaspora, 1860-present; Slave Voyages; Legacies of British Slavery; African-American Women Writers of the 19th Century; Black Cultural Archives.
• To interrogate the varied theoretical and methodological approaches to research undertaken by scholars of race, including the use of the archives, critical reading, and contextual study.
• To recover the cultural symbology propagated by enslaved and free(d) black men and women.
• To promote critical enquiry into racial historiography and the different ways of recording and remembering encoded within these narratives.
• To consider the textual, visual, and material cultures of Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean in the years before 1900, examining the intersection of written, pictorial, and other forms of extant evidence.

Content

• Content Note: this module engages with primary source materials that contain highly offensive examples of racial stereotyping and other difficult themes, such as sexual violence.
• Embraces a broad range of materials. This module includes works by William Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and Isaac Bickerstaffe, but privileges black authors such as Phyllis Wheatley, Briton Hammon, Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, Julius Soubise, and Mary Prince, as well as the illiterate and /or semi-literate men and women whose authorial agency and modes of resistance were encoded in non-literary forms, such as oral storytelling, dance, and masquerade.
• Addresses a range of topics, including slavery and abolition; strategies of representation; subjectivity; canonicity; gender; social class; and popular culture.
• Introduces, develops and challenge assumptions about ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures.
• Focuses on the political and aesthetic axes of representation, with particular reference to questions of authorial agency and spectacle.
• Combines close readings of specific texts with attention to the period’s historical and intellectual contexts, including imperial and sexual ideologies.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain detailed knowledge and understanding of the literary, economic, social and political cultures of pre-1900 America, Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean, as well as the relations between these cultures.
• Students will be able to demonstrate familiarity with relevant historical and intellectual contexts for understanding issues related to race and representation.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature • an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work o Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15 minute consultation session in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a sheet of points, relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University