Module: ENG6109-20 Nation and Race in Early Modernity

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Chris Ivic

Module Tutor Contact Details: c.ivic@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This module gives you the opportunity to study a wide range of texts from between the late sixteenth- and the late eighteenth-centuries that engage with the emergent English/British nation-state and its encounters with cultures on the outskirts of the burgeoning British Empire. The texts on the module draw from a rich variety of writings, including autobiography, dialogues, drama, letters, maps, novels, poetry, political pamphlets, royal proclamations, travel narratives. The module will enable you to explore these texts in relation to issues such as nationhood and nationalism, migration, civilization, Orientalism, race, slavery, and gender. These texts also raise questions about identity and self, and the often contradictory strategies of individual and collective identity formation. This module also aims to foster a perceptive and historical awareness, as well as sensitivity to cultural diversity and important ethical issues relating to differences of nation, ethnicity, race, and gender.

Aims

This module is intended to offer you the opportunity to:

1. critically analyse writings upon nation, race, and related issues in Early Modernity;

2. compare and contrast these complex and contradictory writings;

3. draw upon the historical, social, political, or philosophical contexts of writings upon nationhood and race;

4. understand these writings in the light of current critical debates and theories of gender, nation, race

2. Outline syllabus:

Section I (Weeks 1-4): Englishness and Britishness – The module begins by introducing you to scholarship on national identity and nationalism by historians, literary historians, and sociologists. This section will then consider issues such as nationhood, migration, civility, and commerce in the work of range of eighteenth century writers such as Edmund Spenser, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, and James Thomson.

Section 2 (weeks 5-8): The self and the world – Beginning with an examination of historical and modern theories of cultural difference, this section will consider the literary representation of Britons’ encounters with non-European peoples. This section might include Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Fletcher’s The Island Princess, or Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. We will also include the voices of former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho, and Phillis Wheatley.

Section 3 (weeks 9-13): Women’s narratives – This section will focus on fictional and autobiographical writings by women that represent the intersectional relationships between gender, nation, and race. Writers may include Ann Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Janet Schaw, or Jemima Kindersley.

3. Teaching and learning activities:

A variety of teaching and learning activities will be used, including self-directed tasks, seminar discussion, lectures, in-class and independent engagement with online resources, and assessment tutorials.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Portfolio: 2,000 words

• % Weighting: 40

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay: 3,000 words

• % Weighting: 60