SE2451: African-American Literature

School English Literature
Department Code ENCAP
Module Code SE2451
External Subject Code 100319
Number of Credits 20
Level L6
Language of Delivery English
Module Leader PROFESSOR Carl Plasa
Semester Autumn Semester
Academic Year 2022/3

Outline Description of Module

The module offers an introduction to African American literature from 1845 to the present, situating it within its changing historical, literary and cultural contexts.  The formal and linguistic complexity of the texts will be highlighted by means of close reading; and there will also be an emphasis on their relationships of dialogue and exchange. We will begin by engaging with the antebellum slave narrative and the most famous example of the genre in the shape of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. We then move on to examine W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, paying particular attention to Du Bois’s ideas about the colour-line and ‘double-consciousness’. Subsequent to this, the critical focus shifts to the literature of the Harlem Renaissance (Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes). In the latter stages of the module, we explore four texts: Richard Wright’s Native Son, one of the major African American novels of the post-Renaissance era; Robert Hayden’s quasi-Modernist ‘Middle Passage’; and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved.

On completion of the module a student should be able to

  • discuss a broad range of key texts in the African American literary tradition and of the critical issues and debates that they have engendered
  • analyse the principal thematic concerns and formal features of these texts from a historically and critically informed perspective
  • apply high level critical skills of close analysis to literary texts
  • select and organise material purposefully and cogently

How the module will be delivered

The module will be delivered through a mix of large group and small group sessions, including, where relevant, asynchronous materials such as lecture recordings. Full details on the delivery mode of this module will be available on Learning Central at the start of the academic year – and may be, in part, determined by Welsh Government and Public Health Wales guidance.   

Skills that will be practised and developed

Academic skills: the particular skills of this module entail reading and understanding the development of African American literature from the antebellum era to the present day, with the emphasis placed on a practice of close reading informed by historical awareness and recent critical debates in the field. This requires careful scholarship, sensitivity to language through close reading and a broader historical awareness of social change.

Employability skills: these include the ability to synthesise information, participate in group-based discussion, to negotiate different and conflicting standpoints, to communicate ideas and to produce clear, informed arguments in a professional manner. Student-led research will encourage skills of information collation, selection and synthesis.

How the module will be assessed

The methods of summative assessment for this module are detailed in the table below.

Formative work to be submitted before each summative assessment: you can choose between submitting, as appropriate, an essay plan/structure, synopses of essay topic options (if undecided) or sample paragraph/s; for creative assignments, you can submit working drafts of parts of your composition, as arranged with the workshop convenor.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:
As with School policy, failed or unsubmitted assessments can be retaken during the August resit period.

Assessment Breakdown

Type % Title Duration(hrs)
Written Assessment 100 Essay N/A

Syllabus content

Indicative Syllabus:

  • The Middle Passage and its literary legacies 
  • the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery
  • polyphony and experiment 
  • ‘double consciousness’ 
  • double oppression 
  • the Harlem Renaissance 
  • racial and cultural hybridity 
  • the ideology of lynching 
  • modernist influences
  • strategies of resistance (including the Civil Rights Movement) 
  • orality, literacy and music (spirituals, jazz and the blues) 
  • supernaturalism and the gothic 

Content warning: please be aware that several of the books/topics discussed in this module deal with difficult themes (including racism and depictions of graphic and sexual violence), which some students may find distressing. If you have any concerns about this, please contact the module leader for advice.


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