This module explores representations of place in twentieth- and twenty-first century African American, Caribbean, Black British, and Welsh literature, paying particular attention to how place is linked to questions of cultural and racial identity.

· demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ways in which place has been figured in literary texts produced in different geographical spaces and at different historical junctures;

· analyse the principal thematic concerns and formal features of these texts from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives.

The module will be delivered by two 1-hour lectures per week throughout the Spring semester, with these supported by a weekly seminar. Weeks 1-5 focus on African American, Caribbean and Black British writing, with the emphasis shifting, in Weeks 7-11, onto Welsh literature. Lectures will give an overview of the materials and ways of approaching them and be supplemented by slides or handouts (the latter usually available to students on Learning Central at least 24 hours beforehand). Seminars will provide students with an array of learning opportunities including close textual analysis, small group discussion and informal presentation.

This module enables students to develop an understanding of the importance of place and the ways in which it has been imagined in African American, Caribbean, Black British and Welsh literary and cultural traditions. Employability skills include the capacity to synthesise information; participate effectively in group-based discussion; and produce clear, cogent and informed arguments in a professional manner.

The essay is assessed according to the Marking Criteria set out in the English Literature Course Guide. There are otherwise no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

The main readings for this module are books and journal articles. Students should contact the module leaders as early as possible if they require readings in an alternative format.

Primary Texts

African American

Robert Hayden, ‘Middle Passage’ (1962), in The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, 2nd edition (Norton: 2004), pp. 1520-24. Distributed as photocopy.

Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928), in Quicksand and Passing, ed. Deborah E. McDowell (Rutgers University Press, 1986)

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977; Vintage, 2004)

Caribbean

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, ed. Angela Smith (1966; Penguin, 2000)

Black British

Caryl Phillips, Cambridge (1991; Vintage, 2008)

Welsh

Dylan Thomas, A Dylan Thomas Treasury: Poems, Stories and Broadcasts (Phoenix, 2001)

Raymond Williams, Border Country (1960; Parthian Books, 2005)

R. S. Thomas and Gillian Clarke, selected poems. Distributed as photocopy.

Selected short stories: Alun Lewis, ‘The Housekeeper’ (1942); Kate Roberts, ‘The Condemned’ and ‘The Last Payment’ (1937). All distributed as photocopy.

Kate Roberts, Feet in Chains (1936; Parthian, 2012)

Trezza Azzopardi, The Hiding Place (Picador, 2001)

Indicative topics:

· Dwelling and deracination

· Gendered spaces

· Interpenetration of language and place

· Borderlands

· Ideas of home and belonging

· Dislocated subjects: The Middle Passage and the slave ship

· Place and race

· Identity and belonging

· Colonial encounters

INDICATIVE READING AND RESOURCE LIST:

African American, Caribbean, and Black British Literature

Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Carl Pedersen, ed., Black Imagination and the Middle Passage (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 5-13

Alison Donnell, Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature: Critical Moments in Anglophone Literary History (Routledge, 2005)

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Verso, 1993), pp. 1-40

Farah Jasmine Griffin, ‘Who Set You Flowin?’: The African-American Migration Narrative (Oxford University Press, 1995)

John Cullen Gruesser, Confluences: Postcolonialism, African American Literary Studies, and the Black Atlantic (University of Georgia Press, 2007)

James Walvin, Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire (Wiley-Blackwell, 2001)

Detailed bibliographies for specific texts will be issued in lectures.

Welsh Literature

Kirsti Bohata, Postcolonialism Revisited (University of Wales Press, 2004)

Matthew Jarvis, Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry (University of Wales Press, 2008)

M. Wynn Thomas, Internal Difference: Literature in Twentieth-Century Wales (University of Wales Press, 1992)

Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Spokesman Books, 2011)

Raymond Williams, Who Speaks for Wales?: Nation, Culture, Identity, ed. Daniel Williams (University of Wales Press, 2008)