The module offers an introduction to African American literature from 1845 to the present, focusing on some of the major works of the period and  situating them within their changing historical, literary and cultural contexts.  The formal and linguistic complexity of the texts will be highlighted by means of close reading; and there will also be an emphasis on their relationships of dialogue and exchange.

• discuss a broad range of key texts in the African American literary tradition and of the critical issues and debates that they have engendered 

• analyse the principal thematic concerns and formal features of these texts from a historically and critically informed perspective 

• apply high level critical skills of close analysis to literary texts 

• select and organise material purposefully and cogently 

The module will be delivered through a variety of learning methods which may include a combination of digital learning activities to support face-to-face sessions. 

Academic skills: the particular skills of this module entail reading and understanding the development of African American literature from the antebellum era to the present day, with the emphasis placed on a practice of close reading informed by historical awareness and recent critical debates in the field. This requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to language through close reading and a broader historical awareness of social change.

Employability skills: these include the ability to synthesise information, participate in group-based discussion, to negotiate different and conflicting standpoints, to communicate ideas and to produce clear, informed arguments in a professional manner. Student-led research will encourage skills of information collation, selection and synthesis.

Essay: 100%

Formative work to be submitted before each summative assessment: you can choose between submitting, as appropriate, an essay plan/structure, synopses of essay topic options (if undecided) or sample paragraph/s. workshop convenor.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:
As with School policy, failed or unsubmitted assessments can be retaken during the August resit period.

Indicative Content:

• The Middle Passage and its literary legacies 
• the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery
• polyphony and experiment 
• ‘double consciousness’ 
• double oppression 
• the Harlem Renaissance 
• racial and cultural hybridity 
• the ideology of lynching 
• modernist influences
• strategies of resistance (including the Civil Rights Movement) 
• orality, literacy and music (spirituals, jazz and the blues) 
• supernaturalism and the gothic 

Content warning: please be aware that several of the books/topics discussed in this module deal with difficult themes (including racism and depictions of graphic and sexual violence), which some students may find distressing. If you have any concerns about this, please contact the module leader for advice.