Browse Hierarchy ESH271: James Baldwin and American Civil Rights

This module presents a mix of different sorts of representation of one great historical moment, that of Civil Rights in the US from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s. The movement for Civil Rights marked a decisive moment in the making of our contemporary world; although the situation of blacks in the USA was not formally a colonial one, the social determination to break the bonds of racial subjugation was part and parcel of the world becoming 'postcolonial'; and it is an unfinished history, which still reverberates. The first few weeks focus on the novels, short stories and autobiographical reportage of one writer, James Baldwin. Baldwin was pretty much (though not quite) the first non-white American author. Thereafter we branch out to explore different writings and different forms of representation.