Module ENGL30B1: History and Memory in African Women's Writing

Department: English Studies

ENGL30B1: History and Memory in African Women's Writing

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To examine the ways in which African women writers have engaged with national histories, and repositioned their lenses to focus on women’s narratives.
• To centre African women’s writings and perspectives, and engage with writings across generations of women and across regions in Africa.
• To consider the local contexts of the writings and examine how these contexts shape the narratives.
• To explore the dynamics between individual or collective memory vis-à-vis ‘official’ histories.
• To examine semi-biographical literature and consider the significance of literary texts as a site for women’s narratives.

Content

• Explores women’s writing through a range of thematic approaches such as nation and history; postcolonial conflict; colonialism and the marginalisation of women; African women’s traditions; narratives of resistance.
• Includes selected works in translation to provide a sense of African women’s writing beyond the Anglophone tradition.
• Encourages an engagement with the socio-historical contexts out of which women’s writing has emerged.
• Considers geographical and generational differences amongst the writing studied, and encourages a comparative approach to the study of the works.
• Examines works that are thematically varied and situated across broad historical periods covering Atlantic slavery to the present day.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to demonstrate an ability to engage critically with debates relating to African women’s writing and theories.
• Students will be able to demonstrate a familiarity with literary frameworks and theories, in their explorations of African women’s writing.

• 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
• 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. It will also include a workshop delivered during one of the seminar sessions to prepare for the first summative assessment that takes the form of a podcast.
• 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: Students will have one 15 minute individual feedback session. This session will not be centrally timetabled and will be arranged via the tutor and student. The feedback that is provided after the first summative assessment allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the assessed essay.
• Before the first essay, students will have an individual consultation session (15 minutes) in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting. This session will not be centrally timetabled, and will be arranged via the seminar leader and student.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

One seminar will be used to deliver a workshop that will prepare students for presenting their ideas and findings for the first summative assessment (podcast).

■ 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