English 350: More-or-Less Final Reading List and Calendar

I won't rule out the possibility that this may undergo some further revisions once we're in Oxford (I will of course provide you with copies of any late additions), but what you see below is at least a whole lot firmer and more detailed than what you've seen from me before now, and it should give you a pretty good indication of the pace and overall load of the assigned reading.  Please e-mail me if you've mislaid the username and password required to gain access to many of the items below.  And remember:  since you won't have Internet access in Oxford, you need to print off a set of these readings now and bring them with you.  Last updated:  Saturday, June 9th at 5:30 p.m. PDT.

General

First, here are some items that show up again farther down the list in conjunction with particular class meetings, but that also provide more general context for the course as a whole.  It certainly wouldn't hurt you to read them once now and again later:

• Tom Nairn, from The Break-Up of Britain
• Alan Sinfield, from Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain
• Salman Rushdie, “The New Empire Within Britain” (alternate version)
• [I've changed my mind about the Stuart Hall piece that was formerly in this spot--though if you've already read it, you shouldn't feel as though you've wasted your time:  it's a fine piece, and I'm sure it could inform your thinking about the other things we'll be reading in some interesting ways.]

• Articles on the Runnymede Trust's October 2000 Report on the Future of Multi-ethnic Britain (from the Guardian's website, “What Is Britain?”

  • Excerpts from the Report
  • Alan Travis on the controversy over the Report's conclusions regarding the "racial connotations" of "Britishness"
  • Columnist Gary Younge on reaction to the Report by the right wing
  • Stuart Hall, one of the Report's authors, with a riposte to its critics (see also this column from the Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, another of the Report's authors)
  • Samir Shah with a critical view of press coverage of and political reaction to the Report

I also highly recommend that you explore the rest of the “What Is Britain?”site (http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/britain/) on your own, along with the companion site on “Race in Britain” (http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/racism).  

Some of the work of our class will involve reading (and interpreting) the print versions of the Guardian and other daily newspapers for evidence of continuing anxiety over the evolution of British cultural identity.  Those of you who've been paying attention to current affairs in Britain from this side of the pond know that during the last week of May, there were several days of what's euphemistically described as "racial unrest" involving white racists and third-generation British "Asians" (i.e., people of Indian, Pakistani and/or Bangladeshi descent) in Oldham, a suburb of Manchester.  Some people fear that this signals the beginning of a long, hot summer.

This is a story we'll be following while we're in England, so you'd do well to give yourself a crash course on the goings-on in Oldham by scrolling down to the "Oldham" section of the “Race in Britain” page and reading everything there (as well as in the three following sections, "What Happened?," "Oldham Comment and Analysis," and "Oldham Background").

You should also find it interesting in light of all this to read excerpts from a speech given by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook on April 19th of this year.  The speech, devoted to the theme of British identity, was clearly intended to defuse some of the very same smoldering anxieties which just a few weeks later would ignite into the conflagration in Oldham.  And though it outlines succinctly what are generally understood to be the three principal sources of the ongoing "crisis" in British identity--immigration, membership in the European Union, and a resurgence in Welsh and Scottish nationalism--the aspect of the speech that garnered most attention in the press was its treatment of race and ethnicity.  (Because of its corny and patronizing use of a particular Anglo-Indian dish as a figure for multi-cultural Britishness, in fact, the address quickly became known as the "Chicken Tikka Masala" speech.)  If you're interested in knowing more about the history of people of color in Britain, visit the BBC's “Windrush Season” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/archive/windrush/index2.shtml)--which has slightly mysterious navigation, but is worth exploring, and/or  my "Black Britain" page (http://www.humboldt.edu/~me2/engl465/bb/bbfront.html).

Calendar

Though this schedule looks deceptively meticulous, you should nevertheless regard it as volatile and subject to change for any number of reasons (we decide we need more time on a particular text or texts; we decide we're done with a particular text or text(s) early; we decide to read and discuss Zadie Smith's White Teeth; we need to accommodate a guest speaker (I'm working on it!).)  Please keep in mind, too, that the days of our class meetings during the second and third weeks of the program may change.

Meeting 1 (Wednesday, June 20th).  Lecture/Discussion:  "Rule Britannia"--Empire, Decline, and the Roots of British Identity

• Tom Nairn, from The Break-Up of Britain
• Salman Rushdie, “The New Empire Within Britain”
• Jonathan Glancey, "Britain's True Colours"
• other short pieces to be distributed in class

Meeting 2 (Thursday, June 21st).  Discussion.

• Caryl Churchill, Cloud 9
• Resources for Cloud 9 (not required):
  • Study questions by Prof. Elisa Sparks (Clemson U)
  • William Blake, "The Little Black Boy" (quoted in the play)

Meeting 3 (Friday, June 22nd):  Lecture/Discussion:  Prelude to Ishiguro--the Postwar Settlement and Imperial Nostalgia.

• Tom Nairn, from The Break-Up of Britain (again)
• Alan Sinfield, from Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain
• The Royal Society of St. George:
  • Home Page | Introduction | "What Does the Society Do?"
• English Heritage

• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. 
• Resources for The Remains of the Day (not required):
  • Kazuo Ishiguro website (George Landow, Brown U)
  • Interview with Linda Richards, January magazine

Meeting 5 (Wednesday, June 27th):  Lecture/Discussion--The Broken Promise: Anarchy in the UK.  (NOTE: set aside this evening for a screening of "The Ploughman's Lunch.")

• Alan Sinfield, from Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (esp. pp. 20-1: "The Broken Promise")
• Dick Hebdige, from Subculture: The Meaning of Style
• Resources on Punk and Post-Punk from the All-Music Guide (highly recommended):
  • Punk Music (general) | British Punk | New Wave | Ska Revival
  • The Sex Pistols | The Clash | The Specials
  • "Rock Against Racism"
• various lyrics to be distributed in class

Meeting 6 (Thursday, June 28th):  Discussion--Putting the "Great" Back in Great Britain: The Falklands War.

• (Discussion of "The Ploughman's Lunch")

Meeting 7 (Friday, June 29th):  Lecture/Discussion--There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack.  (Crash course on the history of Blacks and Asians in modern-day Britain.)

• Paul Gilroy, from “‘The Whisper Wakes, the shudder plays’: ‘race,’ nation and ethnic absolutism.”  [Chapter 2 of There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation.]
• Salman Rushdie, “The New Empire Within Britain”
• John Carvel, "The Rise of the Little Englanders"

Meeting 8 (Monday, July 2nd):  An Englishman born and bred--almost.  Discussion.  (Note: set aside this evening for a screening of "Secrets and Lies.")

• Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia.
• Resources for The Buddha of Suburbia (not required):
  • Official Hanif Kureishi site
  • Biography & Bibliography (Subhi Shahra, Postcolonial Studies, Emory U)
  • Articles and reviews from The New York Times
  • Interviews: with Adnan Ashraf (1996) | with Harriet Gilbert (1997) | with Amitava Kumar (2001) (HSU users only) | with Terry Gross ( 200) (RealAudio file)