123045 PS PS Literary Studies (2025S)

NB
This course will take place on site and en bloc (1st-4th July; 10 am-4 pm). This means you have to make sure that you have read and watched and listened to all the material - the two plays, the mini-series, the novels, the novella and the poems - before the course starts in July.

NB
There will be a preliminary prep-meeting for this course on zoom. Please make a note of the day/time and keep that slot free: 11th April 5-6 pm. You have to be registered for the course to be invited to this meeting, at which we are going to distribute the specialist tasks. This means, ideally, you should have already decided before this meeting for which slot you would like to sign up. Please have a back-up slot up your sleeve, in case you do not get your first choice. The course programme and materials will be online at the beginning of term. Please use them to reach an informed decision.

This course dedicates itself to making visible the literary contribution of Black British writers - Makar Jackie Kay and her colleagues - to several genres. We'll set out by taking a look at the Windrush Scandal, which broke in 2018, and discuss one play, one TV-show based on a novel and some poems that deal with the history of the Windrush generation and the political circumstances that led to mixing up these British citizens with illegal immigrants. We'll look at very recent piece of gig-theatre about a young woman struggling with racism and undying colonial entitlement. And we'll delve into three pieces that discuss refugees' experiences: a heroic crown (a type of sonnet); a novella about a London au pair and a novel about an asylum seeker from paradise. We'll also discuss two queer novels, one about a jazz trumpeter who, upon death, turns out to have been a tran*s man; and one about a gay Caribbean Londoner who only comes out in this late seventies.

Given that a high percentage of your grade in a PS is made up of writing exercises, we will dedicate a lot of time to developing your writing skills, clarifying how to go about writing an academic paper in literary studies, focusing on its preparation, organization, research techniques, genre requirements, methods, literary theories and concepts etc. You will be expected to hand in three assignments. Each of these is a building block for the term paper. Since this is a block seminar, though, most of the writing will take place after the course has already finished. In other words: the four days we will spend together will be a period of intense input, and then you will have time over the summer to work your way through your writing assignments. With the information that the feedback to your assignments imparts and the input from the academic writing sections under your belt, you should be well- equipped to find a topic, determine an object of analysis, formulate a research question, pick an approach and write your term papers.

Specialist model:
There will be no student presentations in this class. Instead, each student will act as a specialist for part of one lesson, either alone or as a member of a team, depending on the number of participants. How exactly this works in terms of timing, what will be expected of you, and what a 'prep mail' is, I shall explain in detail in a zoom meeting that will take place before spring break. Once you have registered for the course and I have the complete participants' lists, I will contact those registered via email and send you the link.

This proseminar has two goals: first, to acquaint you with contemporary Black British writing and one of its adaptations for TV; second, to teach you the steps involved in putting together a proper term paper.