Undergraduate Course: Black American Fiction (ENLI10341)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will provide a thorough introduction to African American fiction, from the nineteenth-century to the present day. All texts will be studied in both their socio-historical and theoretical contexts, and distinctive narrative patterns will be evaluated. Key areas of 'cultural' interest - including the "Harlem Renaissance" (1920's/30), the "Black Aesthetic" movement (1960's/70) - will be considered alongside broader social and political events: slavery and its abolition, post-Civil War "Reconstruction", segregation and "Jim Crow", Panafricanism, the Civil Rights Movement and others. Although the primary texts are all narrative prose fiction, we will also read poetry and non-fictional prose as supporting material. |
| Course description |
Not entered
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | Essential course texts |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Other Study Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
one hour autonomous learning group
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
1 Coursework Essay of 2,500 words (30%);
1 Final essay of 3,000 words (60%)
Class participation mark (10%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Students should be able to discuss distinctive attributes of Black American fiction and to be able to historicize these.
- Students should be able to explain and employ key relevant theoretical approaches
- Students should be able to account for formal innovations in the literature
- Students should be able to historically contextualise the literature
- Students should be able to refer to non-primary materials to explain Black American literary developments
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Reading List
PRIMARY TEXTS
Phillis Wheatley, Selected poems (c1770) [poems on LEARN]
Frederick Douglass, ¿The Heroic Slave¿ (1852)
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)
Nella Larsen, Passing (1929)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Richard Wright, Native Son (1940) & ¿The Man Who Lived Underground¿ (1942)
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972)
Toni Morrison, Paradise (1997)
KEY SECONDARY TEXTS
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and McKay, Nellie Y., eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Second edition. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York; Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Ginsberg, Elaine K. Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 1996.
Hutchinson, George, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Kaplan, Carla. The Erotics of Talk: Women¿s Writing and Feminist Paradigms. New York; Oxford. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mitchell, Angelyn. Within the Circle: an anthology of African American literary criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the present. Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 1994.
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Keith Hughes
Tel: (0131 6)50 3048
Email: keith.hughes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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