British Literature II

We will read a few canonical texts you should know as English majors but we will also read many of the lost voices from this field, writers who have, for the most part, not been included in the canon primarily for the reasons that they are women, or people of color, or disabled, or queer, or any combination of the aforementioned. This class is the remix of British Literature. We’re going to chop it up, splice it, mix it, you name it. The one thing we will NOT do is let British Literature just mean one thing. We will recognize that British Literature is many things all at once; it is a vibrant, protean, occasionally beautiful while often problematic thing that we can use in a multitude of ways.

SELECT READINGS

Romantic poets - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Robert Wedderburn, "The Horrors of Slavery"

Mary Seacole, Wonderous Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

JJ Thomas, Froudacity

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Virginia Woolf, selected readings

Una Mason, London's Calling

CLR James, selections from The Black Jacobins

Claudia Jones, excerpts about the West Indian Gazette

Beryl Gilroy, Black Teacher

Zadie Smith, rotating selection