WiSe 19/20: PS-Introduction to Cultural Studies: Race and Racism in Contemporary British Nonfiction
Dominique Haensell
Kommentar
In 2016, more than 50.000 British readers elected The Good Immigrant, a collection of essays about race and migration, as the “Books Are My Bag” no. 1 book of the year. The following year, Reni Eddo-Lodge utilized the polemic around her eponymous blog post from 2014 to launch one of the most successful non-fiction books of 2017—Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. In general, the past publishing decade has witnessed a host of non-fictional political writing consistently topping (not only) British bestseller lists. Interestingly, the genre of non-fiction writing appears to be both topical and marketable in an alleged “post-truth” age. But has this popular format somehow altered the message previously transported through mainly academic or fictional writing on race and racism?
Through a variety of readings, we will look at key events such as the police shooting of Mark Duggan and the subsequent riots, Brexit or the fire at Grenfell Tower, and examine how British discourses on race and racism may have changed in the last two to three decades. To this end, we will combine key writings on race by authors such as Stuart Hall, Avtar Brah, Paul Gilroy, or Kobena Mercer with more recent, mostly non-academic texts. We will freely explore the already elastic definition of the non-fiction text and also look at formats such as documentary, poetry, music, blogposts and podcasts.
Students are asked to acquire a copy of Nikesh Shukla (ed.): The Good Immigrant, Reni Eddo-Lodge: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Akala: Natives—Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. All other texts will be made available by the instructor.
Schließen16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung