Study information

African American Avant-Gardes

Module titleAfrican American Avant-Gardes
Module codeEASM172
Academic year2020/1
Credits30
Module staff

(Convenor)

Dr Rob Turner (Convenor)

Duration: Term123
Duration: Weeks

9

Number students taking module (anticipated)

15

Module description

“The black artist’s role in America,” declared Amiri Baraka in 1966, “is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.” Across the eleven weeks of this module we will explore this sense of cultural struggle through a close study of radical works from 1900 to present, paying particular attention to the relation between artistic forms, cultural politics, and theories of identity and race. Alongside our study of creative texts, we will also examine the emergence of the avant-garde as a critical category, questioning its relevance for and relation to experiments taking place in the “black radical tradition.”

The module may be taken as part of the broad M.A. in English Literary Studies, but it is also a qualifying module for the American and Atlantic Studies Pathway.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to provide you with the disciplinary knowledge and critical vocabulary necessary for contributing to ongoing debates about the literary forms and cultural politics of African American writing. To this end, this module introduces you to major works of African American experimentalism and critical theory while also allowing you to explore their newer formations and articulations. By the end of this module, you will be able to critically assess the often uneasy correspondence between aesthetic experimentation and social politics that underwrites the creative work of the African American avant-gardes.? 

In addition, the module aims to:  

  • frame your understanding of African American literature within a range of theoretical and contextual frameworks, including queer theory, genre theory, Marxism, aesthetics, and modernism 

  • motivate you to take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of African American radical literature by supplementing the literary texts you study with musical works, film, and periodicals; 

  • emphasise the importance of collectives, groups, and creative organisations in the formation of avant-garde movements 

  • situate the African American avant-gardes in relation to international literary and political movements from anti-colonialism to Pan-Africanism to Afrofuturism 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

  • 1. Demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to analyse African American radical literature that appeared during the period, relating its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context.
  • 2. Demonstrate an advanced capacity to compare and contrast primary texts studied on the module, making connections between those texts across the module.
  • 3. Apply at an advanced level current debates in literary studies to African American avant-garde writing of the twentieth century
  • 4. Develop an understanding of the relationship between collective movements and individual writers in the avant-garde literary cultures of the period.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

  • 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to digest, select, and organise interdisciplinary material and to trace the development of debate across disciplinary boundaries.
  • 6. Demonstrate an advanced and precise ability to work from the detail of literary texts, with a full appreciation of their formal aspects.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

  • 7. Through essay-writing and other assignments, demonstrate advanced research and bibliographic skills, an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and to write clear and correct prose.
  • 8. Through research for module, essays, and presentations demonstrate an advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis.
  • 9. Through research, module discussion, and essay writing demonstrate an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to critically reflect on your own learning process.

Syllabus plan

The syllabus will be organised in a chronological way, beginning with an exploration of Du Bois’s notion of blackness as a fundamentally avant-garde position, “gifted with second-sight in this American world” (8).

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

  • “Double consciousness” (Du Bois) in relation to formal experimentation
  • Jazz, improvisation, and writing
  • the Harlem Renaissance
  • Gender in African American modernism
  • the Black Arts Movement
  • groups, collectives, and literary organisation
  • Afrofuturism

Writers to be studied may include:

W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Ishmael Reed, Black Took Collective, Renee Gladman

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
222780

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching22Weekly module sessions
Guided Independent Study110Module Reading and Preparation (11 x 10 hours per week)
Guided Independent Study168Additional reading, research and essay preparation

Summative assessment (% of credit)

CourseworkWritten examsPractical exams
10000

Details of summative assessment

Form of assessment% of creditSize of the assessment (eg length / duration)ILOs assessedFeedback method
Periodical Research Essay252500 words1-9Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up
Essay755000 words1-9Feedback sheet with opportunity for tutorial follow-up

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Original form of assessmentForm of re-assessmentILOs re-assessedTimescale for re-assessment
Periodical Research EssayPeriodical Research Essay1-9Referral/deferral period
EssayEssay1-9Referral/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 50%) 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 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Basic reading:

Indicative authors include: W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Ishmael Reed, Black Took Collective, Renee Gladman

The following books and periodicals are available through the Exeter eLibrary:

  • Avilez, Gershun. Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016.
  • Baker, Houston A. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
  • ---. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
  • Bell, Kevin. Ashes Taken for Fire: Aesthetic Modernism and the Critique of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
  • Bürger, Peter. The Theory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
  • Chandler, Nahum Dmitri. X—The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Thought. New York: Fordham UP, 2014.
  • Crawford, Margo Natalie. Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics. Urbrana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.
  • Edwards, Brent Hayes. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003.
  • ---. Epistrophes: Jazz and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2017.
  • Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: OUP, 1988.
  • Kelly, Robin D.G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
  • Mackey, Nathaniel. Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.
  • Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
  • ---. Black and Blur (consent not to be a single being). Durham: Duke UP, 2017.
  • ---. Stolen Life (consent not to be a single being). Durham: Duke UP, 2017.
  • ---. The Universal Machine (consent not to be a single being). Durham: Duke UP, 2017.
  • Nielsen, Aldon Lynn. Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
  • Reed, Anthony. Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2014.
  • Spahr, Juliana. Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2018.
  • Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Periodicals:

  • African American Review
  • American Quarterly
  • American Literary History
  • American Literature
  • Black Scholar
  • Callaloo: a Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters
  • Journal of American Studies
  • Journal of Black Studies
  • Obsidian

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11225

Key words search

African American; avant-garde; radical; American Literature; American Studies

Credit value30
Module ECTS

15

Module pre-requisites

None

Module co-requisites

None

NQF level (module)

7

Available as distance learning?

No

Origin date

12/02/2019

Last revision date

28/07/2019