University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras campus College of Humanities Department of English

Course title: Caribbean Literatures and Languages in a Global Context: Black British Cultural Studies: Theory, Film, Literature, and Popular Culture

Course number: INGL 8080/ ENGL 8080

Course credits: 3 credits/ 45 hours

Prerequisites: INGL 6489: Caribbean Narrative; INGL 6488: Literature, Language, and Culture of the English Speaking Caribbean, or professor’s authorization.

Course Description: Critical study of trends in Black Cultural Studies, as articulated in recent decades by the Race and Politics Committee at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham, England, and other theorists; writers and literary performers; film makers from Ceddo, Sankofa, and the Black Audio Film Collective; and popular culture artists.

Objectives: Students will be able to: 1. Understand the field of Black British Cultural Studies as a critical field of local and global importance, with special relevance to Caribbean Studies scholars. 2. Recognize the various differing modes in which sociologists, cultural critics, and anti-racism activists have documented the legacies of forced diaspora, slavery, colonization, creolization, decolonization, migration, anti-immigration backlash, and community mobilization in African, Asian, and Caribbean populations settling in Britain, post-WWII. 3. Critically appraise how Cultural Studies critics, writers, and film makers have interrogated essentializing, “absolute” racial categories (i.e. tropes of “Blackness”) and restrictive criteria for national belonging/ exclusion maintained by dominant cultures. Evaluate how these critics and artists have responded to British state and media generated racialist discourses and public policies. 4. Historically frame sociopolitical changes in popular and intellectual conceptualizations of race in Britain, from the era of strategic appropriation and deployment of the term “Black” by grassroots social activists groups (1960s-1980s) to the contemporary period (1980s-2000s) of emphasis by African, Asian, and Caribbean-descended critics and artists on anti- essentialist identity politics and plural, heterogeneous, and syncretized subject positions. Historically contextualize the transitions in race politics as expressed by literary, visual, cinematic, and popular artforms. 5. Trace the field’s connection with (and critique of) Cultural Studies, Marxist theory, Modernity/ Postmodernity Studies, and Diaspora or Globalization Studies. 6. Analyze the ways in which Gender/ Feminist/ Womanist Studies and Gay/ Lesbian Studies (and expressive arts by women and gay/ lesbian artists) have impacted Black British Cultural Studies. 7. Appreciate the relationship between the reformulations of race by Cultural Studies critics and Black popular expressions of racial and cultural affiliation in Britain (in pulp fiction, street carnival, cinema, and dancehall/ popular music). 8. Demonstrate knowledge of some of the bibliographic and web sources and research methods appropriate to the advanced study of Black British Cultural theory and African, Asian, and Caribbean diaspora expressive artforms. 9. Initiate the process of independent research and study of texts, which will permit students to formulate original dissertation proposals and write, present, and publish analytical papers.

Course Outline (content and timeframe): Part I: “Blackness,’ Britain, and National Belonging in the Post-WWII decades (1950s-1960s): The Immigrant Experience, Representations of Immigrants in Media and State Documents, and Counter-discourses of Migration (2 weeks): Introduction to the course and a critical review of studies documenting the immigrant experience, supplemented by the analysis of tropes of “the immigrant incursion” and territorial disputes appearing in newspaper editorials, state policy documents, police publications, and fiction representing Post-World War II settlers from African, the Caribbean, and the Indian Subcontinent. Part II: Race, Racism, and the Limitations of Class Analysis in British Cultural Studies: The Emergence of Black British Cultural Studies (3 weeks): A critical study of major texts produced (1970s- early 1990s) by critics influencing, affiliated with, or influenced by the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and, to a lesser degree, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Issues examined will include the relationship between labor, capital, state, and racism during eras of national decline, “moral panic,” immigration backlash, and (post)-Thatcherism; methodologies and discourses of policing; the mapping of symbolic locations within immigrant territories; subcultural style, media, popular and state representations of “Blackness” and “Britishness”; anti-immigration legislation; the emergence of “Black unity” and anti-racism movements in African, Asian and Caribbean sectors; the creation of counter-discourses of racial, ethnic, and cultural identity; factions and schisms in the “Black (imagined) community”; and the assertion of complex, mutli-form identity politics in contemporary multi-racial Britain. Additionally, the connection between Black British Cultural Studies and Cultural Studies, Marxist theory, Modernity/ Postmodernity Studies and Diaspora/ Globalization Studies will be discussed. Part II-B: Race and Representations of Public Disorders, 1958, 1976, 1981, 1982: “The Enemy Within” vs. “Come What May, We’re Here to Stay” (1 week): A study of media, police, and Cultural Studies critiques and state policy reformulations in response to the White Riots of Notting Hill (1958), the Carnival disorder of 1976, and the Brixton disorders of 1981 and 1982, as well as other public manifestations of the period. Issues explored include the “colour bar”; housing discrimination; criminalization of Black youths and police practices; racialized conceptualizations of urban space/ violence; and community action. Part III: Black British Cinema and Cultural Studies: The Contradictory Spaces Between Memory, Identity, Self-Image, Modes of Representation, Theory, Britishness, Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality (3 weeks): A study of theoretical/ sociopolitical interventions and experimental techniques of Black independent film-making (1980s-90s) by film collectives Ceddo, Sankofa, the Black Audio Film Collective and Channel Four, as well as the critical reception of these films by Black British Cultural Studies critics. Part IV: Black British Feminism and Writing by Black Women in Britain: 1980s-1990s (1 week): Multiple forms of feminist theory in the Black British context, as well as novels and films by women of African, Asian, and Caribbean descent, will be analyzed. Readings in Black Feminist Criticism will highlight how issues of racial, cultural, and gendered identity are foregrounded in fiction by Black women writers. Part V: Ethnic and Religious Factionalism in Anti-racism Coalition- building: Critical and Popular Controversies Over Fictional Representations of British Muslims and Inter-Cultural Hybridity (1 week): A study of the societal impact of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and subsequent book-burning rallies on conceptualizations of Black solidarity. Although, previously, notions of “Black unity” co-existed with understandings of the wide array of ethnic and cultural affinities, prejudices, and tensions dividing those diverse individuals and groups categorized as “Black,” the Rushdie controversy contributed to a polarized public debate over cultural differences. This phenomenon and its analysis by Black Cultural Studies critics will be studied. Part VI: Black British Cultural Studies and Desire: Masculinities, Sexual Politics, and Challenges Against Homophobia (1 week): Cultural Studies criticism, fiction, and films that have transgressed class, national, racial, and sexual boundaries by challenging exploitative hegemonic images of Black manhood or asserting positive Black gay images will be studied. Part VII: Black British Popular Culture: Theorizing Culture, Race, Nation, and Identity Politics on the Popular Level in Pulp Fiction, Dancehall Music, and the London Notting Hill Carnival (1 week): Black British Cultural Studies’s analysis of popular culture’s capacity to “theorize” and perform in a popular mode decodings of British state and (trans)national mass cultural productions will be studied. Moreover, popular culture’s contradictory tendency to reinscribe essentialist ethnic, racial, and gendered representations and its ability to (de)construct complex (post)-colonial, (post)-national, and (post)-modern reformulations of cultural, racial, national, communal, and individual markers of identity will be analyzed. Black Cultural Studies theory will be applied to readings of popular cultural productions, such as pulp fiction, dancehall music, and the London street carnival in Notting Hill. Part VIII: Contemporary Black Britain, Transnationalism, and Postmodernity: Belonging and Beyond (1 week): An analysis of divergent signifiers and representations of transnational linkages and intercultural pastiche in the contemporary multiracial Britain, focusing on criticism, novels, and films that depict the possible, improbably, and, at times, problematic combinations, syncreticisms, and fissures of individual identities, families, neighborhoods, and communities. A study of representations of communities comprised of an admixture of peoples with varying degrees of alienation from or connection to their consanguineous, familial, and cultural ties to African, Asian, and Caribbean immigrant heritage.

Teaching Strategies: Brief lectures (25%) discussion (25%), oral reports (25%), film screenings (25%), annotated bibliography project, and research/ writing project.

Ley 51 Los estudiantes que reciban servicios de Rehabilitación Vocacional deben comunicarse con el (la) professor(a) al inicio del semester para planificar el acomodo razonable y equipo asistivo necesario conforme a las recomendaciones de la Oficina de Asuntos para las Personas con impedimento (OAPI) del Decanato de Estudiantes. También aquellos estudiantes con necesidades especiales que requieren de algún tipos de asistencia o acomodo deben comunicarse con el (la) professor(a).

Required Resources: Seminar Room, Screening Room, Graduate Seminar Room.

Methods of Evaluation: Oral presentations on critical, theoretical, historical, literary, or cinematic texts (30%) Weekly one-page, single-spaced response paper (20%) One annotated bibliography project (20%) One final seminar-length research paper (18-25 pages) (30%) Students who are absent for three class sessions should expect their final grade to be lowered by one letter grade. Students missing five or more classes should expect to fail the course.

***A differential grading system will be applied for students with special needs.

Grading System: A, B, C, D, F

COURSE OUTLINE:

Monday, August 18th, August 25th

Part I: “Blackness,’ Britain, and National Belonging in the Post-WWII decades (1950s-1960s): The Immigrant Experience, Representations of Immigrants in Media and State Documents, and Counter-discourses of Migration (2 weeks): Introduction to the course and a critical review of studies documenting the immigrant experience, supplemented by the analysis of tropes of “the immigrant incursion” and territorial disputes appearing in newspaper editorials, state policy documents, police publications, and fiction representing Post-World War II settlers from African, the Caribbean, and the Indian Subcontinent.

Required Readings:

Critical Studies: Anne Walmsley. The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966-1972: a Literary and Cultural History. London: New Beacon, 1992. Avtar Brah. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London; Routledge, 1996.

Novels: Sam Selvon, Lonely Londoners Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners

Oral Reports:

Critical Study: Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, eds. Windrush; The Irresistible Rise of Multi- Racial Britain. London: HarperCollins, 1998. Novels: Andrew Salkey, The Adventures of Catullus Kelly V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival

In-class Screening/ Film: 15-minute excerpt from The Notting Hill Carnival (BBC, 1995)

Optional Readings: Critical Study: Marika Sherwood. Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1999. Essays: S. Lawson Welsh. “(Un)belonging Citizens—Un-Mapped Territory: Immigrations and Black British Identity in the Post 1945 Period.” Not on Any Map: Essays in Postcolonial Cultural Nationalism. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996. Paul Boakye. “Darker than Blue: Black British Experience of Home and Abroad.” Britishness and Cultural Studies: Continuity and Change in Narrating the Nation. Eds. Krzysztof Knauer and Simon Murray. Katowice: Slask, 2000. Claudia Jones. “The Caribbean Community in Britain.” I Think of My Mother: Notes on the Life and Times of Claudia Jones. London: Karia Press, 1985; originally published 1964. David Dabydeen, ed. “The Windrush Commemorative Issue: West Indians in Britain, 1948-1998.” Kunapipi 20:1 (Special Issue, 1998).

Monday, September 8th, 15th, 22nd

Part II: Race, Racism, and the Limitations of Class Analysis in British Cultural Studies: The Emergence of Black British Cultural Studies (3 weeks): A critical study of major texts produced (1970s- early 1990s) by critics influencing, affiliated with, or influenced by the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and, to a lesser degree, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Issues examined will include the relationship between labor, capital, state, and racism during eras of national decline, “moral panic,” immigration backlash, and (post)-Thatcherism; methodologies and discourses of policing; the mapping of symbolic locations within immigrant territories; subcultural style, media, popular and state representations of “Blackness” and “Britishness”; anti-immigration legislation; the emergence of “Black unity” and anti-racism movements in African, Asian and Caribbean sectors; the creation of counter-discourses of racial, ethnic, and cultural identity; factions and schisms in the “Black (imagined) community”; and the assertion of complex, mutli-form identity politics in contemporary multi-racial Britain. Additionally, the connection between Black British Cultural Studies and Cultural Studies, Marxist theory, Modernity/ Postmodernity Studies and Diaspora/ Globalization Studies will be discussed.

Required Readings:

Critical Studies: Paul Gilroy. “‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Houston A. Baker, Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg, eds. Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Kobena Mercer. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1994. D. Morley and H Chen, eds. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1996.

Oral Reports: Week #1, September 8th Stuart Hall and T. Jefferson. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain. London; Hutchinson, 1976. Stuart Hall, C. Critcher, C. Jefferson, et al. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978. Dick Hebdige. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979. Week #2, September 15th Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1982. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson, 1984. Institute for Race Relations. Policing Against Black People. London: Institute of Race Relations, 1987. Week #3, September 22nd Dick Hebdige. Cut-‘n-Mix: Culture, Identity, and Caribbean Music. New York: Methuen, 1987. Stuart Hall. The Hard Road to Renewal. Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. London: Verso, 1988. Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Optional Readings: Journals: Race and Class Race Today

Monday, September 29th

Part II-B: Race and Representations of Public Disorders, 1958, 1976, 1981, 1982: “The Enemy Within” vs. “Come What May, We’re Here to Stay” (1 week): A study of media, police, and Cultural Studies critiques and state policy reformulations in response to the White Riots of Notting Hill (1958), the Carnival disorder of 1976, and the Brixton disorders of 1981 and 1982, as well as other public manifestations of the period. Issues explored include the “colour bar”; housing discrimination; criminalization of Black youths and police practices; racialized conceptualizations of urban space/ violence; and community action.

Required Readings:

Critical Study: Abner Cohen. Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Essays: Gayatri Spivak. ‘In Praise of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.” Critical Quarterly 31 (1989): 80-8. Reece, Auguiste. “Handsworth Songs: Some Background Notes.” Framework 35 (1988): 4-18. Salman Rushdie. “Songs Doesn’t Know the Score.” The Guardian (January 12, 1987).

Screenplay: Hanif Kurieshi. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid: The Script and Diary. London: Faber & Faber, 1988.

In-Class Screening/ Film: Stephen Frears, dir., Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (written by Hanif Kureishi)

Out-of-Class Screening/ Film: John Akomfrah, dir., Handsworth Songs

Optional Readings: Critical Studies: Nigel Fielding. The National Front. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Institute of Race Relations. The Fight Against Racism: a Pictorial History of Asians and Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. London: IRR, 1986. Edward Pilkington. Beyond the Mother Country: West Indians and the Nottinghill White Riots. London: I.B. Tauris 7 Co., Ltd., 1988. Lord Scarman, OBE. The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders, 10-12 April 1981. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1982. Essay: Everton A. Pryce. “The Notting Hill Gate Carnival: Black Politics, Resistance, and Leadership, 1976-1978.” Caribbean Quarterly31:2 9June 19850: 35-52. Poetry: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Dread beat and Blood (print and audio)

Monday, October 6th, October 20th, October 27th

Part III: Black British Cinema and Cultural Studies: The Contradictory Spaces Between Memory, Identity, Self-Image, Modes of Representation, Theory, Britishness, Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality (3 weeks): A study of theoretical/ sociopolitical interventions and experimental techniques of Black independent film-making (1980s-90s) by film collectives Ceddo, Sankofa, the Black Audio Film Collective and Channel Four, as well as the critical reception of these films by Black British Cultural Studies critics.

Required Readings:

Critical Studies: Week #1, October 6th Jim Pines and P. Willemen, eds. Questions of Third Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1989. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). Black Film/ British Cinema. London: ICA, 1988. Week #2, October 20th Mbye B. Cham and Claire Andrade-Watkins. Blackframes: Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988. L. Young. Fear of the Dark: “Race,” Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge, 1996. Week #3, October 27th Niti Sampat Patel. Postcolonial Masquerades: Culture and Politics in Literature, Film, Video and Photography. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

Essays: Week #1, October 6th Stuart Hall. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation.” Exiles: Essays on Caribbean Cinema. Ed. Mbye Cham. London: African World Press, 1992: 220-36. Kobena Mercer and Issac Julien. “De Margin and De Centre.” Screen 29:4 (1998). Patrick Williams. “Imagined Communities: Black British Film in the Eighties and Nineties.” Critical Survey 8:1 (1996): 3-13. Week #2, October 20th Jim Pines. “Black Films in White Britain.” Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain, 1945-90. Ed. Margaret Dickinson. London: British Film Institute, 1999. Manthia Diawara. “Black British Cinema: Spectatorship and Identity Formation in Territories.” Public Culture 3:1 (1990 Fall): 33-47. Paul Gilroy. “Climbing the Racial Mountain: A Conversation with Issac Julien.” Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Culture. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993.

Week #3, October 27th Perminder Dhillon-Kashyap, “Looking for the Asian Experience.” Screen 29 (1988): 120-26. Marina Atille and Maureen Blackwood. “Black Women and Representation.” Films for Women. Ed. Charlotte Brunsdon. London: British Film Institute, 1986: 202-8. Manthia Diawara. “The Nature of Mother in Dreaming Rivers.” Third Text13 (1991): 73-84.

In-Class Screening/ Films: Maureen Blackwood and Issac Julien, dir. The Passion of Remembrance Issac Julien, dir., Territories Martina Atille, dir., Dreaming Rivers Pratibha Parmar, dir., Khush Pratibha Parmar, dir., Sari Red

Optional Readings: Critical Studies: Coco Fusco. Young, British, and Black: a Monograph on the Work of Sankofa Film-Video Collective and Black Audio Film Collective. Buffalo: Hallwalls Arts Centre, 1988. Therese Daniels, Jane Gerson, and Kobena Mercer, eds. The Colour Black: Black Images in British Television. London: British Film Institute, 1989. Essays: Manthia Diawara. “Englishness and Blackness: Cricket as Discourse on Colonialism.” Callaloo 13 (1990): 830-844. John Akomfrah. “Black and White.” Sight and Sound 2 (May 1992): 30-31. John Akomfrah. “Black Independent Film-making: a Statement by Black Audio Film Collective.” Artrage 3:4 (1983): 29-30. Karen Alexander. “Black British Cinema in the 90s: Going Going Gone.” British Cinema of the 90s. Ed. Robert Murphy. London: British Film Institute, 2000.

Monday, November 3rd

Part IV: Black British Feminism and Writing by Black Women in Britain: 1980s-1990s (1 week): Multiple forms of feminist theory in the Black British context, as well as novels and films by women of African, Asian, and Caribbean descent, will be analyzed. Readings in Black Feminist Criticism will highlight how issues of racial, cultural, and gendered identity are foregrounded in fiction by Black women writers.

Required Readings: Critical Study: Heidi Safia Mirza, ed. Black British Feminism: a Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Essays: Pratibha Parmar. “Black Feminism: The Politics of Articulation.” Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990. Carole Boyce Davies. “Black British Women Writing the Anti-Imperialist Critique.” Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Euorpe. Eds. Gisela Brinkler-Gabler and Sidonie Smith. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Black Women Writers in Britain. Special issue of Wasafiri 17 (Spring 1993).

Novels (Class divided for readings): Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen Ravinder Randhawa, A Wicked Old Woman Meera Syal, Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee Jenny McLeod, Stuck up a Tree Joan Riley, Waiting in the Twilight

Out- of-Class Screenings/ Films: Gurinder Chadha, dir., Bhaji on the Beach (written by Meera Syal and Gurinder Chadha) Menelik Shabazz, dir., Burning an Illusion

Optional Readings/ Film: Critical Studies and Anthologies: Rhonda Cobham and Merle Collins, eds. Watchers and Seekers: Creative Writing by Black Women in Britain. London: Camden Press, 1987. K. Grewal, L. Landor, and P. Parmar. Charting the Journey: Writing Black and Third World Women. London: Sheba Feminist publishers, 1988. Amrit Wilson. Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain. London: Virago, 1978. Film: Gurinder Chadha, dir., A Nice Arrangement

Monday, November 10th

Part V: Ethnic and Religious Factionalism in Anti-racism Coalition- building: Critical and Popular Controversies Over Fictional Representations of British Muslims and Inter-Cultural Hybridity (1 week): A study of the societal impact of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and subsequent book-burning rallies on conceptualizations of Black solidarity. Although, previously, notions of “Black unity” co-existed with understandings of the wide array of ethnic and cultural affinities, prejudices, and tensions dividing those diverse individuals and groups categorized as “Black,” the Rushdie controversy contributed to a polarized public debate over cultural differences. This phenomenon and its analysis by Black Cultural Studies critics will be studied.

Required Readings:

Critical Study: P. Lewis. Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics, and Identity Among British Muslims. London: L. B. Tauris, 1994.

Novel: Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses

Oral Report: Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia

Out-of-Class Screening/ Film: Udayan Prasad, dir., My Son the Fanatic, 1997

Monday, November 17th

Part IV: Black British Cultural Studies and Desire: Masculinities, Sexual Politics, and Challenges Against Homophobia (1 week): Cultural Studies criticism, fiction, and films that have transgressed class, national, racial, and sexual boundaries by challenging exploitative hegemonic images of Black manhood or asserting positive Black gay images will be studied.

Required Readings:

Critical Study: Kobena Mercer. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. London and New York; Routledge, 1994.

Play: Michael McMillan. Brother to Brother, in Black and Asian Plays

Screenplay: Issac Julien and Colin MacCabe, dirs. Diary of a Young Soul Rebel (screenplay by Paul Hallam and Derrick Saldaan McClintock)

Oral Report/ Film: Issac Julien, dir., Looking for Langston

In-Class Screening/ Film: Stephen Frears, dir., My Beautiful Laundrette

Out-of-Class Screening/ Film: Issac Julien and Colin MacCabe, dirs., Young Soul Rebel

Optional Reading; Tony Sewell, Black Masculinities and Schooling.. London: Trentham Publishing, 1997; reprinted 2000. Monday, November 24th

Part VII: Black British Popular Culture: Theorizing Culture, Race, Nation, and Identity Politics on the Popular Level in Pulp Fiction, Dancehall Music, and the London Notting Hill Carnival (1 week): Black British Cultural Studies’s analysis of popular culture’s capacity to “theorize” and perform in a popular mode decodings of British state and (trans)national mass cultural productions will be studied. Moreover, popular culture’s contradictory tendency to reinscribe essentialist ethnic, racial, and gendered representations and its ability to (de)construct complex (post)-colonial, (post)-national, and (post)-modern reformulations of cultural, racial, national, communal, and individual markers of identity will be analyzed. Black Cultural Studies theory will be applied to readings of popular cultural productions, such as pulp fiction, dancehall music, and the London street carnival in Notting Hill.

Required Readings:

Critical Study: Steve Redhead. Unpopular Cultures: The Birth of Law and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Essays: Paul Gilroy. “One Nation Under a Groove.” Anatomy of Racism. Ed. David Theo- Goldberg. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Stuart Hall. “What is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Black Popular Culture. Ed. Gina Dent. Seattle: Bay Press, 1992: 21-33.

Popular Novels: Victor Headley, Yardie Ferdinand Dennis, The Last Blues Dance

Audio selections: Ragga, Bhangra, and Jungle; DJ Apache Indian; Dub Asian Foundation

Oral Reports/ Films: Julien Henrique, dir., Babymother Gurinder Chadha, dir., I’m British but… Issac Julien, dir., The Darker Side of Black

Optional Readings: Critical Studies: John Davison. Gangsta: The Sinister Spread of Yardie Gun Culture. London: Vision Paperbacks, 1997. Geoff Small. Ruthless: The Global Rise of the Yardies. London: Warner Books, 1995. Essay: Abner Cohen. “A Polyethnic London Carnival as a Contested Cultural Performance.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 5:1 (January 1982): 23-41. Popular Novel: Donald Gorgon, Cop Killer

Monday, December 1st

Part VIII: Contemporary Black Britain, Transnationalism, and Postmodernity: Belonging and Beyond (1 week): An analysis of divergent signifiers and representations of transnational linkages and intercultural pastiche in the contemporary multiracial Britain, focusing on criticism, novels, and films that depict the possible, improbably, and, at times, problematic combinations, syncreticisms, and fissures of individual identities, families, neighborhoods, and communities. A study of representations of communities comprised of an admixture of peoples with varying degrees of alienation from or connection to their consanguineous, familial, and cultural ties to African, Asian, and Caribbean immigrant heritage.

Required Readings:

Critical Studies and Anthologies: Caryl Phillips, ed. Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. Hazel V. Carby. Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America. London; Verso, 1999.

Essay: Stuart Hall. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” Culture, Globalization and the World System.

Novels (class divided for readings): Zadie Smith, White Teeth Buchi Emecheta, The New Tribe Sunetra Gupta, A Sin of Colour

Oral Reports: Oral Reports/ Novels: Ravinder Randhawa, The Coral Strand Judith Bryan, Bernard and the Cloth Monkey

Oral Reports/ Poetry: Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, The Arrival of Bright Eye

Oral Reports/ Films: Damien O’Donell, dir., East is East (written by Ayub Kahn-Din)

Optional Readings: Critical Studies: Les Back and John Solomos. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Stuart Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage/ Open University Press, 1997. Iain Chambers. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Essays: Ramu Samantrai. “The Weapons of Culture: Collective Identity and Cultural Production.’ REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 14 (1998): 131-48. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Black London.” The New Yorker 28 April and 5 May, 1997. Aijaz Ahmad. “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory.’” Social Text 17 (19870: 3-25. Mary Karen Dahl. “Postcolonial British Theatre: Black Voices at the Centre.” Imperialism and Theatre; Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance. Ed. J. Ellen Gainor. London: Routledge, 1995. Devin Orgeron. ‘Re-membering History in Issac Julien’s The Attendant.” Film Quarterly 53:4 (2000 Summer): 32-40. Fred D’Aguiar. “Have You been Here Long?: Black Poetry in Britain.” New British Poetries: the Scope of the Possible. Eds. Robert and Peter Barry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. R. Radhakrishnan. “Adjudicating Hybridity, Co-ordinating Betweeness.” Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies 5:1 (Autumn 2000).

A. Selected Bibliography:

Karen Alexander. “Black British Cinema in the 90s: Going Going Gone.” British Cinema of the 90s. Ed. Robert Murphy. London: British Film Institute, 2000. Les Back and John Solomos. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Houston A. Baker, Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg, eds. Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Paul Boakye. “Darker than Blue: Black British Experience of Home and Abroad.” Britishness and Cultural Studies: Continuity and Change in Narrating the Nation. Eds. Krzysztof Knauer and Simon Murray. Katowice: Slask, 2000. Carole Boyce Davies. “Black British Women Writing the Anti-Imperialist Critique.” Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Euorpe. Eds. Gisela Brinkler-Gabler and Sidonie Smith. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Avtar Brah. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London; Routledge, 1996. Hazel V. Carby. Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America. London; Verso, 1999. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in Seventies Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1982. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson, 1984. Iain Chambers. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Fred D’Aguiar. “Have You been Here Long?: Black Poetry in Britain.” New British Poetries: the Scope of the Possible. Eds. Robert and Peter Barry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Mary Karen Dahl. “Postcolonial British Theatre: Black Voices at the Centre.” Imperialism and Theatre; Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance. Ed. J. Ellen Gainor. London: Routledge, 1995. Paul Gilroy. “‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Stuart Hall, ed. Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage/ Open University Press, 1997. Stuart Hall and T. Jefferson. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain. London; Hutchinson, 1976. Stuart Hall, C. Critcher, C. Jefferson, et al. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Macmillan, 1978. Stuart Hall. The Hard Road to Renewal. Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. London: Verso, 1988. Dick Hebdige. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979. Kobena Mercer. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1994. D. Morley and H Chen, eds. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1996. Devin Orgeron. ‘Re-membering History in Issac Julien’s The Attendant.” Film Quarterly 53:4 (2000 Summer): 32-40. Caryl Phillips, ed. Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, eds. Windrush; The Irresistible Rise of Multi- Racial Britain. London: HarperCollins, 1998. Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Ramu Samantrai. “The Weapons of Culture: Collective Identity and Cultural Production.’ REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 14 (1998): 131-48. Niti Sampat Patel. Postcolonial Masquerades: Culture and Politics in Literature, Film, Video and Photography. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Marika Sherwood. Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1999. Anne Walmsley. The Caribbean Artists Movement, 1966-1972: a Literary and Cultural History. London: New Beacon, 1992. S. Lawson Welsh. “(Un)belonging Citizens—Un-Mapped Territory: Immigrations and Black British Identity in the Post 1945 Period.” Not on Any Map: Essays in Postcolonial Cultural Nationalism. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996. L. Young. Fear of the Dark: “Race,” Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge, 1996.