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 | Available to all 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 |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | Essential course texts |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2022/23, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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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 (40%);
1 Final essay of 3,000 words (60%)
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| 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
Introduction: American slavery and African American authorship:
Phillis Wheatley, Selected poems (c1770) [poems will be made available on LEARN]
Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave¿ (1852) [link to e-text will be made available on LEARN]
Black American Modernism & the Harlem Renaissance:
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)
Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928)
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Modernist developments:
Richard Wright, Native Son (1940)
Ralph Ellison, Mister Toussan¿ (1941), In a Strange Country (1944), and Flying Home (1944) [these are short stories that will be made available on LEARN]
Historical metafiction and slave narrative:
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972)
Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979)
Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008)
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Keith Hughes
Tel: (0131 6)50 3048
Email: keith.hughes@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hope Hamilton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4167
Email: hope.hamilton@ed.ac.uk |
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