Insurgent Narratives: Class Warfare and Modern Literature
| Module title | Insurgent Narratives: Class Warfare and Modern Literature |
|---|---|
| Module code | EAS3250 |
| Academic year | 2019/0 |
| Credits | 30 |
| Module staff | Professor Mark Steven (Convenor) |
| Duration: Term | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration: Weeks | 11 |
| Number students taking module (anticipated) | 15 |
|---|
Module description
This module explores the literary history of class warfare from around 1790 through the present. By reading works from a socially diverse yet consistently militant group of writers, you will be encouraged to think about how literature participates in a fight for the material equality of all. Together we will explore the connections between world literature and the interdisciplinary fields of political economy, critical geography, and military strategy. Overall, this module invites you to consider the evolution of class warfare in literature as both revolutionary praxis and aesthetic category.
Module aims - intentions of the module
The aims of the module are to:
- enable you to situate complex literary texts within their contexts and to facilitate your consideration of the relationships between literature and politics.
- encourage you to consider the intersections of class with other social identities, political causes, and aesthetic categories.
- motivate you to critically engage with the various means by which revolutionaries and writers have challenged material inequality.
- stimulate you to frame your readings of literature within a range of theoretical and contextual frameworks, derived from the interdisciplinary fields of political economy, critical geography, and military strategy.
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
ILO: Module-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 1. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse politically-committed literature written within the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context
- 2. Enter into contemporary scholarly conversations in literary and cultural theory as related to questions of class, class warfare, and revolutionary politics
- 3. Compare, contrast, and synthesise between different texts across the module
ILO: Discipline-specific skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
- 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts
ILO: Personal and key skills
On successfully completing the module you will be able to...
- 6. Through research for seminars and essays, demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
- 7. Demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
- 8. Through research and writing, demonstrate an advanced capacity to make critical use of secondary material, to question assumptions, and to reflect on their own learning process
Syllabus plan
Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:
Emphasising the thought and action of multiple revolutionary figures (from Toussaint L’ouverture and Rosa Luxemburg through Che Guevara and the Black Panthers) alongside the narrative art of literary writers (from Jack London and Bertolt Brecht through Monique Wittig and Rachel Kushner), the syllabus is divided into historically-responsive tactics for class warfare. Texts studied focus on industrial action, collective armament, guerrilla combat, domestic terrorism, and the melancholia of defeat.
Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 33 | 267 | 0 |
Details of learning activities and teaching methods
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 22 | 11 x 2 hour seminars devoted to the main readings in given week. |
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching | 11 | One x 1 hour lecture: The lectures will be devoted to setting up the material for that week, by situating each main reading within its multiple contexts. |
| Guided Independent Study | 33 | Study group preparations and meetings |
| Guided Independent Study | 70 | Seminar preparation (individual) |
| Guided Independent Study | 164 | Reading, research and essay preparation |
Summative assessment (% of credit)
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
Details of summative assessment
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preparatory Exercise for Field Manual - Individual Oral Presentation | 10 | 500 words | 1-8 | Tutor and peer feedback in seminar |
| Field Manual | 40 | 2500 words | 1-8 | Written feedback plus tutorial follow-up |
| Final Essay | 50 | 3000 words | 1-8 | Written feedback plus tutorial follow-up |
Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preparatory Exercise for Field Manual - Individual Oral Presentation | Individual oral presentation | 1-8 | Referral/deferral period |
| Field Manual | Field Manual | 1-8 | Referral/deferral period |
| Final essay | Final essay | 1-8 | Referral/deferral period |
Re-assessment notes
Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.
Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.
Indicative learning resources - Basic reading
Indicative primary texts:
For Marx and Engels, political ambition could be summed up in just one sentence: “Abolition of private property.” In the spirit of that objective, to which the marketization of learning is anathema, you will not be asked to purchase any texts for this module: all required reading will be available in PDF format, and I will encourage you to share our texts widely.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
- Karl Marx, Civil War in France (1871)
- Emile Zola, Germinal (1885)
- Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)
- Ellen Wilkinson, Clash (1929)
- Victor Serge, The Birth of Our Power (1928)
- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938)
- Ngugi wa Thiong’o, A Grain of Wheat (1967)
- Julio Cortazar, A Manual for Manuel (1973)
- Nanni Balestrini, The Unseen (1989)
- Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (1973)
- Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres (1969)
- The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (2007)
Selected secondary texts (about which you will have the option to write):
- Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (1994)
- Stefan Aust, The Baader-Meinhoff Complex (1985)
- Mariano Azuela, The Underdogs (1915)
- Bertolt Brecht, Threepenny Novel (1934)
- Charlotte Bronte, Shirley (1849)
- Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1955)
- George Ciccariello-Maher, Decolonizing Dialectics (2017)
- Joshua Clover, Riot-Strike-Riot (2016)
- Angela Davis, An Autobiography (1974)
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854)
- Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (1845)
- Alfred Doblin, November 1918 (1950)
- Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855)
- Vasily Grossman, For a Just Cause (1956)
- Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (1960)
- Che Guevara, Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War (1963)
- Patty Hearst, Every Secret Thing (1982)
- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
- Andrew Hsiao and Audrea Lim, The Verso Book of Dissent (2016)
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)
- The Invisible Committee, To Our Friends (2014)
- Festus Iyayi, Violence (1979)
- C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins (1938)
- Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons (1934)
- Maxine Hong Kingston, The Warrior Woman (1976)
- Takiji Kobayashi, The Cannery Boat (1929)
- Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (2013)
- Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969)
- Frank Norris, Octopus (1901)
- David Peace, GB84 (2004)
- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006)
- RAF, The Urban Guerrilla Concept (1971)
- Muriel Rukeyser, Savage Coast (1939)
- Gianfranco Sanguinetti, Terrorism and the State (1978)
- Victor Serge, Conquered City (1932)
- Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto (1967)
- John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle (1936)
- Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos, The Uncomfortable Dead (2004)
- Enzo Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia (2016)
- Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (1928)
- Ada Wilson, Red Army Faction Blues (2012)
- Slavoj Zizek, Violence (2008)
Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources
- Students will be directed to specific readings primarily from Marxists.org
| Credit value | 30 |
|---|---|
| Module ECTS | 15 |
| Module pre-requisites | None |
| Module co-requisites | None |
| NQF level (module) | 6 |
| Available as distance learning? | No |
| Origin date | 21/02/2019 |
| Last revision date | 22/02/2019 |