Module description
This course is an introduction to the field of Black studies, which emerged against the backdrop of anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist struggle during the 1960s and 1970s and continues to stand at the forefront of theoretical and cultural inquiry in our present moment. Through a focus on geography and the environment we will explore how race and blackness are produced and maintained. Beginning with oceans and archipelagos, moving to the city and its suburbs, and concluding on soundscapes and atmosphere, we will examine how these locales have contributed to the instantiation and reproduction of social hierarchies and how Black writers and thinkers have sought to reinscribe and revisit these often oversignified sites. We will pay particular attention to how the unique properties of different forms, mediums, and genres push against the boundaries of established critical methodologies and work towards an expansive understanding of what constitutes Black studies and Black study.
Assessment details
1 x 3000 word essay (85%)
5 x 200 word reflections on environment and race (KEATS forum) (15%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to:
- explore a range of Black literary and visual artworks from the United States, the Caribbean, and Britain
- locate where and how aesthetic forms participate in theoretical debates about the constitution of categories like blackness, race, and study
- discuss how race and blackness are produced and develop a precise critical vocabulary for the analysis of historic and ongoing modes of racial subjection
- build on critical skills developed in Writing the Black Atlantic and first year core modules American Literature, Introducing Literary Theories, and Writing Race, Writing Gender
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to demonstrate their ability to:
- engage with foundational work in Black studies including Black geographies, feminism, ecocriticism, and critical university studies
- articulate key issues pertaining to the relationship between the production of race and the construction of ‘environment’
- develop critical reading methods which are grounded in cross-disciplinary methods (from literary studies, history, geography and urban studies) and collective inquiry
- sustain a scholarly argument built around readings of literary texts and visual art alongside theoretical and historical scholarship
- interrogate their own experiences of race, gender, sexuality, and disability in relation to environment and institutions through weekly reflection posts
Teaching pattern
Weekly 2 hour seminar
Suggested reading list
Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (Vintage: Canada, 2012)*
Hale County This Morning, This Evening dir. RaMell Ross, 2018
Raven Leilani, Luster (New York: Macmillan USA, 2020)*
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
Caleb Femi, Poor (Penguin, 2020)
*students are expected to purchase their own copies of these texts.