Postgraduate Course: Black Atlantic (ENLI11023)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course will look at the role of racial discourse in constructions of modernity, through a study of American and British texts. In particular, we will be concerned with the ways in which "Enlightenment" thinking and writing incorporated racial categories into the "humanist" project. The texts on this course engage with this problem and articulate alternative modernities in a Transatlantic context. |
| Course description |
1. ¿The Real Thing:¿ Mapping the Black Atlantic in Early Literature and Visual Culture: Race, Representation and Resistance: African Atlantic Narratives of Slavery and Freedom in UK and US Broadsides: Josiah Wedgwood, Am I Not a Man and a Brother (Stafford, 1787); Slave Ship Brooks (Liverpool, 1788); John Comber, A Poor African (London,1861). [hand-outs supplied]
2. ¿Loophole of Retreat:¿ Tracing Transatlantic Black Womanist Literary Paradigms Part I: Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (1831); Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857). [selected excerpts]
3. ¿Women and Sisters:¿ Tracing Transatlantic Black Womanist Literary Paradigms Part II: T. C. Upham, Narrative of Phebe Ann Jacobs, 1850; John Hawkins Simpson, The True Story of Dinah, An Escaped Plantation Slave (1863).
4. ¿Men and Brothers:¿ African Atlantic Slave Narratives Published in the UK: Benjamin Compton Chisley, A Short Narrative (1851); John Brown, ¿Untitled Manuscript Narrative¿ (1854); William and Ellen Craft, Running A Thousand Miles (1860); James Johnson, The Life of the Late James Johnson (1877). [selected excerpts]
5. ¿No Right to be a Hero:¿ African Atlantic Acts and Arts of Revolution and Resistance: Toussaint Louverture, Sengbe Pieh and Harriet Tubman: John Barber, A History of the Amistad (1840); William Wells Brown, St. Domingo (1855); Sarah Bradford, Harriet, the Moses of Her People (1869). [selected excerpts]
6. Authorship, Artistry and Black Masculinity Part I: William Wells Brown, Travels in Europe (1852).
7. Authorship, Artistry and Black Masculinity Part II: Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).
8. Africa in an Atlantic Imaginary: Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood (1902-3).
9. Transatlantic Anti-Lynching Activism: Ida B. Wells: The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Campaigner. (new ed. 2014). [selections] To consult website: ¿Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.¿
10. Race Relations and the Search for Utopia: Sutton E. Griggs, Imperium in Imperio (1899) and Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901). [selected excerpts]
11. Black Intellectual Traditions, Education and Uplift: Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892) and W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). [selected excerpts]
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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 | Purchase of essential texts as required. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
| At the end of this course students will be able to engage and articulate alternative modernities in American contexts.
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Reading List
Please note that in addition to these primary texts, Paul Gilroy's The Black Atlantic will be used regularly during seminars, so you are advised to bring your own copy.
Secondary Texts:
¿Emanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed. Race and the Enlightenment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
¿J. Martin Favor. Authentic Blackness. Durham NC; London: Duke University Press, 1999.
¿Henry Louis Gates. Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the ¿Racial¿ Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
¿Elaine K Ginsberg. Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Durham NC; London: Duke University Press,1996.
¿C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L¿Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. London: Allison & Busby, 1980.
¿Toni Morrison. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. London: Picador, 1992
¿Orlando Patterson. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, Mass.: London: Harvard University Press, 1982.
¿Alan Rice. Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic. London: Continuum, 2002.
¿Alan Rice and Martin Crawford eds. Liberating Sojourn: Frederick Douglass and Transatlantic Reform. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1999.
¿Eric Sundquist. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1993.
¿Eric Williams, Capitalism & Slavery. London: Andre Deutsch, 1964.
¿Richard Wright. Black Power. London: Harper Perennial, 2008
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | BA |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Patricia Malone
Tel: (0 131 6)50 8618
Email: Patricia.Malone@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kara McCormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk |
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