Universität Wien

123043 PS PS Literary Studies (2025W)

Black Atlantic Thinkers - Literature and the Struggle for New Worldviews

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 12 - Anglistik
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Wednesday 22.10. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 29.10. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 19.11. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 26.11. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 17.12. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 21.01. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17
  • Wednesday 28.01. 16:45 - 20:00 Raum 5 Anglistik UniCampus Hof 8 3E-O1-17

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Do you sometimes encounter theory as complex or challenging to engage with? But what if we approached that difficulty not as a barrier, but as part of a wider effort to challenge injustice, reimagine the world, and carve out new possibilities for being?
This course examines how Black thinkers and artists from the African diaspora have drawn on critical theory to respond to systems of oppression and imagine new social and political possibilities. We will explore works from across the Afro-diaspora—including the Caribbean, Africa, North America, and Britain—that translate theoretical insights into creative expression through poetry, fiction, music, and film. Together, we will consider how ideas take shape in different artistic forms, how these works challenge dominant narratives, and how creativity becomes a form of political engagement and radical imagination. We will explore how seemingly abstract theoretical frameworks connect and resonate with tangible creative texts, and examine how aesthetic expression and political resistance enter into dialogue within these works.

Guided by Paul Gilroy’s notion of a “politics of transformation,” we will ask: How do Afro-diasporic intellectuals and artists create new ways of knowing, feeling, and acting in the world? How do they use form and style to disrupt dominant ideologies? What role can imaginative writing play in fostering social change?
Through close reading, listening, and creative exercises, this course will encourage students to engage with a range of texts and explore how imagination creates alternative worldviews.

Authors studied include Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean Binta Breeze, Roger Robinson, M. NourbeSe Philip, Claudia Rankine, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Aja Monet, Yaa Gyasi, and Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Édouard Glissant, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Sylvia Wynter, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Christina Sharpe, and Ruha Benjamin.

Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify and discuss key contributions of major Afro-diasporic thinkers and artists, situating their work within historical, social, and cultural contexts.
• Analyse and evaluate how abstract theoretical frameworks intersect with artistic forms to function as sites of resistance and social critique.
• Apply theoretical frameworks from the Black diaspora to interpret and critically engage with selected texts across genres.
• Develop and communicate well-supported, original arguments about the relationship between theory and creativity in both written and oral formats.
• Reflect on and experiment with creative practices themselves, using imagination as a tool to explore alternative worldviews and social possibilities

Assessment and permitted materials

Regular attendance and active participation throughout the course (a maximum of 2 unexcused absences allowed); other requirements as listed below.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

• Active participation (10%)
Regular attendance, engaged discussion, and timely submission of research tasks.
• Oral presentation and in-class workshop (15%)
Students will give a 20-25 minute presentation on the weekly readings and key concepts, including additional sources they have researched. The presentation will serve primarily as a foundation for the final paper, which will further develop the ideas introduced.
• Portfolio: Reader-Response Journal (15 %)
A space to collect thoughts, quotations, questions, and connections as you read across the semester.
• Final term paper (60%)
A 3,500-word research paper (+/- 10%), based on your presentation topic. Due date: TBA

To earn a passing final grade for this course, you need to obtain at least 60% (passing threshold) for each element listed above and complete each one of them in a timely manner. Any instance of plagiarism detected will automatically result in a failing grade for the assignment, and possibly for the course.
Grade scale (in %): 1 (very good): 90-100%, 2 (good): 80-89.99%, 3 (satisfactory): 70-79.99%, 4 (pass): 60-69.99%, 5 (fail): 0-59.99%.)

Examination topics

There will be no written exam. The oral and written assignments will require the students to display their familiarity with (1) all readings covered in the course up to the assignment date; (2) additional materials as provided by the instructor; and (3) content covered and ideas presented during class discussions, as well as their skills in (4) academic writing, research, and learning from feedback.

Reading list

All course materials will be posted on Moodle unless otherwise indicated in the syllabus/announced in class.

Reading List:

Creative texts (selected passage)
Novel
- Toni Morrison, *Beloved* (opening chapter)
- Charmaine Wilkerson, *Black Cake* (novel excerpt or TV adaptation, Episode 1)
- Johny Pitts, *Afropean: Notes from Black Europe* (Introduction)

Poetry
- Aja Monet, *My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter* (selected poems, especially “For the Kids Who Live”)
- Jackie Kay, selections from *Other Lovers* (poems)
- M. NourbeSe Philip, *Zong!* (poems, opening sequence “Os”)
- Dionne Brand, *The Blue Clerk* (selected poems)
- Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Inglan is a Bitch” and “It Dread Inna Inglan”
- Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, “Tweet Tweet”
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes, selected poem (e.g., from *The Makings of You*)
- Claudia Rankine, *Citizen: An American Lyric* (excerpts) OR *Just Us* (selections)
- Yrsa Daley-Ward, selected poems from *bone* or *The Terrible*

Short Stories
- Jackie Kay, selections from *Why Don’t You Stop Talking* (short stories)

Audio Recording / Performance Text
- Sonya Renee Taylor, “The Body Is Not an Apology” (poem/performance text)

Student-Selected Creative Texts
- Student-selected creative text (poetry, fiction, music, or film)

Theoretical texts (excerpt)
- Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 1987.
- Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Vintage Canada, 2001.
- Cobo-Piñero, Rocío. Queering the Black Atlantic: Transgender Spaces in Akwaeke Emezi’s Writing and Visual Art. Routledge, 2023.
- Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press, 1993 (+ documentary).
- Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing, University of Michigan Press, 1997.
- Gordon, Lewis R. What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought. Fordham University Press, 2015 (+ documentary).
- Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, pp. 222–237.
- Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
- Jordan, June. Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. Edited by Lauren Muller, Beacon Press, 1995.
- Lorde, Audre. “Poetry Is Not a Luxury.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press, 1984.
- Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016.
- Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 257–337.

Association in the course directory

Studium: BA 612; BEd 046 / 407
Code/Modul: BA10.1; BEd 08a.1, BEd 08b.2
Lehrinhalt: 12-3041

Last modified: Mo 15.09.2025 11:06