BA English Literature with Creative Writing / Course details

Starting from the co-option of ‘marginality’ by a range of Black feminist and postcolonial thinkers in the late twentieth century (e.g. as ‘much more than a site of deprivation’, but also ‘the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance’; hooks, 1989), this course asks how the work of three contemporary authors – m. nourbeSe philip, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jeremy O. Harris – articulates ‘the margin’ as a site of politico-aesthetic confrontation. This involves placing a selection of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, and drama into dialogue with critical texts situated at the intersections of anti-racist, decolonial, Marxist, feminist, and queer studies.

Priority will be given to the detailed consideration of a relatively small number of primary texts, whose subject matter and form are challenging and sometimes disturbing. Students are advised to take this into consideration in advance of selecting the course. Please get in touch if you have any questions: john.roache@manchester.ac.uk 

• To consider the question of textual and other (e.g. social, political, economic) forms of ‘marginality’ in relation to modern and contemporary cultural production.
• To give students a range of practical and theoretical ways of thinking about dominant and peripheral conceptions of culture.
• To consider how issues including but not limited to race, class, gender and sexuality, age, religion, and dis/ability might relate to the above.  
 

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Think in an independent and theoretically-rigorous way about questions of centrality and marginality as they pertain to literary and cultural interpretation.
• Interrogate a range of conceptions and modes of modern and contemporary cultural production, with a focus on questions including but not limited to authority, originality, experimentation, revision, and mediation.
• Give an informed account of the relationships between a range of literary/cultural texts and categorisations from the early twentieth century to today, with a confident understanding of terms such as the avant-garde, modernism, postmodernism, and post-colonialism.
 

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Advance persuasive, well-structured, and critically-informed arguments, both orally and in writing.
• Think carefully about the relationships between literary/cultural production, socio-political identity, economic conditions, and ideology. 
              

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
• Interpret and discuss a wide range of textual forms, including literary manuscripts, experimental poems/novels, digital archives, and social media. 
• Carry out independent research in a range of settings, from the John Rylands Library to the (digitised) Modernist Journals Project. 
• Work effectively as part of a small group in order to plan and deliver a short presentation. 
 

Initiative: students will be expected to work on their own initiative in order to read and research texts/topics. 
Leadership: there will be opportunities for students to take the lead in seminar discussions. 
Organisation: students will need to develop methods for mapping out and managing their time in an effective way. 
Teamwork: students will be required to work effectively as part of small groups. 
Presentation: there will opportunities for students to develop their skills of oral presentation and public speaking.  
Written communication: students will be expected to submit written work that is lucid, well-structured, and persuasive. 
Creativity/innovation: students will be encouraged to think in innovative, original ways about their approach to literary and cultural texts. 
Research: students will need to retrieve, scrutinise, sift, evaluate, summarise, and synthesise large amounts of information in preparing for classes and assignments. 
 

Close reading essay - 40%
Research essay - 60%

•    Audre Lorde, ‘Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference’, in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 1984), pp. 114-123.
•    Avgi Saketopoulou, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023), pp. 106-130, 136-147.
•    bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre (South End Press, 1984), pp. vii-x, pp. 1-15.
•    Fred Moten, ‘Black Mo’nin’’, in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. by David L. Eng and David Kazanjia (University of California Press, 2003), pp. 59-76.
•    Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Explanation and Culture: Marginalia (1979)’, in The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ed. by Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (Routledge, 1996), pp. 29-52.
•    Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History (Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 1-34, pp. 309-333.
•    Johanna Drucker, ‘Visual Performance of the Poetic Text’, in Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, ed. by Charles Bernstein (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 131-161.
•    John Roache, ‘Rethinking the discourse of “marginality” in English literary studies and the social sciences: M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language”’, Textual Practice, 39.2 (2025), pp. 226-260.
•    Kamau Brathwaite, ‘History of the voice’, in Roots (University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 259-304.
•    Kimberlé Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1.8 (1989), pp. 139-167.
•    Patricia Hill Collins, ‘Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought’, Social Problems, 33.6 (1986), S14-S32.
•    Russell Ferguson, ‘Introduction: Invisible Center’, in Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West, eds, Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (New York: New Museum of Modern Art, 1990), pp. 9-14.