Sazzad, Rehnuma

The period following the Second World War was a time of intense transformation in Britain. The period represents a profound shift in consciousness in the nation that was concerned with not only the loss of its empire – a properly global historical event of discernible consequences – but also building a new welfare state. In this crucible of change, literature was instrumental for not only representing the tumultuous times, but also for shaping the connections between Britain’s imperial past and the post-imperial future. The writers constructed a new aesthetic, which functioned as a vital cultural infrastructure – a foundational system that helped society reimagine its identity.

This course delineates literature’s role as an infrastructure for defining the plausibility of a new social order and the scope of political change in post-War Britain. We will discover how literature brought forward narratives to process the end of the British Empire, the language to demarcate social justice, and the imaginative space to conceive of a Britain that encountered the following key issues: Austerity and the Welfare State; Decolonization; Class and Education; as well as American Influence. We will discuss why ‘telling stories’ not only fulfilled the need of cultural production, but also built an ‘information infrastructure’ to illustrate intuitive and explicit systems involving social relations and experiences, which were both articulated and contested. Cultural struggle of post-War Britain came to the forefront, but its complexities were also recorded, particularly from the standpoint of subordinated groups. Literature, thus, became an infrastructure for delineating difficult social choices and recuperating dissent. We will discover where the importance of literary infrastructure lies: not in the magical evocation of fictitious worlds, but as a discourse of authority in the contention regarding the question of extending the British sense of possibilities of human lives.

Following on from this framework, this course will trace how contemporary British writings have continued to explore themes of social change and the complexities of identity in a rapidly evolving society, moving beyond dominant paradigms to highlight diversity and transnational influences in a postmodern context. Underlining some significant shifts in the cultural landscape, for example, Brexit, the course will engage with persisting issues related to race, gender, and class, and how these are reflected in contemporary literary texts. Thus, the aim is to determine the ‘enduring relevance’ of literature representing all the possible meanings of ‘the battle of Britain’ in today’s context, which incorporate Britain’s connection with Europe, America, and the rest of the world.

Texts: Graham MacPhee, Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011); Rachael Gilmour and Bill Schwarz eds., End of Empire and the English Novel since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011); Matthew Whittle, Post-War British Literature and the ‘End of Empire’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Stuart Ward ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Daniel Lea, Twenty-First-Century Fiction: Contemporary British Voices (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Ali Smith, Autumn (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2016); Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (London: Everyman’s Library, 2012); Zadie Smith, Swing Time (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2017); Caryl Phillips, Color Me English: Reflections on Migration and Belonging (New York:The New Press, 2011); David Stephen Mitchell, Cloud Atlas: A Novel (London: Penguin Random House, 2004); Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods (London: Phoenix, 1996); Andrea Levy, Small Island, (London: Headline Review Books, 2004); and Bernardine Evaristo, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2022).

Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-British academic, writer, and
cultural theorist, is a significant figure in understanding
contemporary literature’s function in shaping society. His pioneering
work in the field of cultural studies examines how culture, including
literature, is utilized to construct and fortify power relations, as
well as how individuals and groups navigate and resist the social
structures supporting the power play. We will discuss how Hall’s
theories, such as the incorporation of socio-political contexts in
literary analysis, and circulation of meanings through literary
representations, enhance the processes of social
negotiations. Therefore, the course will evaluate the following concepts
introduced by Hall: Cultural Studies and the Rise of Literature;
Representation and Meaning; Negotiating Meaning and Identity; Race,
Class, and Diaspora; and Hall’s Continuing Influence. In order to do so,
we will apply these ideas to the writings of contemporary British and
American writers like Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa
Lahiri, and Yaa Gyasi.

Since
these writers are connected to more than one culture, the course will
elaborate how their writings show that culture works not by infinitely
reproducing itself, but precisely by ‘translating between’ spheres. By
applying Hall’s diasporic perspectives to their works, the course will
open up avenues for further explorations regarding various meanings of
cultural belonging. We will focus on Hall’s emphasis that
representations are possibilities, since they portray not the real, but
images of the real world. This will lead us to comprehend that Hall
grappled with the neo-liberal world we inhabit through his theoretical
concepts, which created a political legacy that enables us to grapple
with that world ourselves. We will particularly study Hall’s
observations regarding race, gender, and class oppressions, which can be
experienced by different individuals at different historical moments
and often in culturally dissimilar ways. Last but not least, we will
discover how globalization has impacted the British and American
societies in diverse ways.

Texts: Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, vols. 1and 2 (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2019); Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2016); Stuart Hall, Selected Writings on Race and Difference (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2021); Helen Davis, Understanding Stuart Hall (London: Sage Publications, 2004); Zadie Smith (White Teeth, London: Penguin, 2001, and NW, London: Penguin, 2013); Andrea Levy (Fruit of the Lemon, London: Tinder Press, 2000, and The Long Song, London: Headline Review, 2010); Amitav Ghosh (The Glass Palace, London: The Borough Press, 2001, and The Shadow Lines, London: John Murray Publishers, 2011);
Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies, London: Flamingo, 2000, and Roman Stories, London: Picador, 2024); and Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing, London: Penguin, 2017, and Transcendent Kingdom, London: Penguin, 2022).

Requirements: active participation, presentation, term paper (M.A.: 15 pages, B.A./Lehramt: 10-12 pages)

British Cultural Studies: the ‘Birmingham School’ and
Beyond 

We will discussthe
theorisation of British culture and its relation to major features of the
social structure and experience from three perspectives: founding figures like
Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, and E. P. Thompson; Stuart Hall’s pioneering
contributions to the field; and Britain’s dynamics with Europe and America in
the context of the domination of Pacific-centred history. As Hall (1990) puts
it: ‘For me, cultural studies really begins with the debate about the nature of
social and cultural change in postwar Britain. An attempt to address the
manifest break-up of traditional culture, especially traditional class
cultures, it set about registering the impact of the new forms of affluence and
consumer society on the very hierarchical and pyramidal structure of British
society.’ Therefore, we will focus on the following aspects of the field:
questions of culture and society; interconnection between culture and politics;
British culture living through its postcolonial, post-hegemonic crises
particularly in terms of its dynamics with Europe/America; translating
knowledge into the practice of culture; making ‘confluence possible, and
solidarity sustainable,’ despite struggles for dissimilar representations; new
ways of thinking, resistance, and survival; discovering contradictions
revealing underlying power dynamics; feminist construction of narratives to
revalue the past; open-endedness of dialogical method resulting in specific
judgments in unstable socio-political contexts; and last but not least, new
ethnicities demanding to speak from multiple identitarian positions. In short,
the course will assess the role of agency in times of unstable evenness to
arrive at a deeper understanding of Antonio Gramsci’s dictum, ‘pessimism of the
intellect, but optimism of will.’

Texts: Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Abingdon: Routledge,
2017); Raymond
Williams, Culture and Society: 1780–1950 (London: Vintage Classics, 2017); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working
Class (London: Penguin Classics, 2013); Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations
in Feminism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992); David Morley, ed. British
Cultural Studies: Geography, Nationality, and Identity (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001); Stuart Hall, Essential Essays,
vols. 1and 2 (Durham: Duke
University Press Books, 2019); Stuart Hall, Cultural
Studies 1983: A Theoretical History (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2016); Stuart Hall, Selected Writings on Marxism (Durham: Duke University Press
Books, 2021); Stuart Hall, Selected Writings
on Race and Difference (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2021).