2020/21 Taught Postgraduate Module Catalogue

ENGL5105M Caribbean and Black British Writing

30 credits

Module manager: Professor John McLeod
Email: j.m.mcleod@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2020/21

Pre-requisite qualifications

As for MA programme

This module is not approved as an Elective

Objectives

- To explore the diversity of aesthetic forms which emerge in Caribbean and black British texts from the 1950s to the present day, in the context of political upheal in the decolonising Caribbean and the polycultural transformation of the UK.
- To engage with several issues raised by Caribbean and Black British texts, including colonial and postcolonial identities, migration and its transformative consequences, formulating new identities and ethnicities, rewriting national and colonial histories, postcolonial sexualities, racism and post-racial envisionings, the cultural politics of national and diasporic self-fashioning.
- To illuminate three particular incidents in the evolution of Caribbean and black British writing: writing the Caribbean anew in the mid-century; black British culture and its critique; contemporary Caribbean discourses.

Skills outcomes
Masters (Taught), Postgraduate Diploma & Postgraduate Certificate students will have had the opportunity to acquire the following abilities as defined in the modules specified for the programme:
- the skills necessary to undertake a higher research degree and/or for employment in a higher capacity;
- evaluating their own achievement and that of others;
- self direction and effective decision making;
- independent learning and the ability to work in a way which ensures continuing professional development;
- to engage critically in the development of professional/disciplinary boundaries and norms.

Syllabus

This module presents a range of recent texts by (Anglophone) Caribbean and Black British writers. It engages with a variety of issues including: the relationship between literature and cultural identity; the construction of and challenge to cultural boundaries; ‘new ethnicities’; representing Caribbean migrancy to Britain; nationalism and transnationalism; new forms of ‘Britishness’; Caribbean and Black British postcolonialities; constructions of gender and ‘race’; the politics of making a Caribbean and Black British canon. Attention will also be given to the aesthetic diversity of Caribbean and Black British writing, and the complex interface between literary form and cultural politics. The module also articulates postcolonial discourses and Caribbean and black British ethnicities, identities and sexualities.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Seminar	10	2.00	20.00
Private study hours			280.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			300.00

Private study

Reading, researching, seminar preparation, essay writing: 280 hours.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Students may be required to write one unassessed essay of 2000 words.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	1 x 4,000 word essay	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 05/02/2021 10:23:40

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