EL40LU: IMAGE MATTERS: EARLY ARCHIVES OF REPRESENTATION IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (2015-2016)

Course Aims

• To enhance understanding of the role of circulating images in and of the African diaspora.
• To delineate the relationships between power, presence and respectability.
• To consider the role of race in visual work
• To explore the portrayal of an entire community or nation in these archives/collections.
• To compare different images across time and space in order to comprehend the social life of the photos.
• To explore how and in what ways these historical images matter to the African diaspora and to the history of race, cultural and postcolonial studies.

Main Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

• think in a sophisticated way about visual images, performance and rhetoric in the African diaspora;
• demonstrate detailed knowledge about specific visual archives;
• demonstrate a keen understanding of the key themes and underlying tensions in the study and propagation of these images;
• reflect critically on the relationship between race and power, as well as form;
• write in a sophisticated way about images of the African diaspora in the nineteenth century and their legacies; and
• demonstrate their understanding and knowledge through group discussion, presentations and written assignments.

Course Content

This course charts a path through nineteenth-century archives of representation in the African diaspora by looking at both under-examined and publicly recognized images of people of African descent. The course focuses on depictions of identity, constructions and articulations of race and visual narratives of power and respectability.

Available only to candidates in programme year 4 of the MA English, Film & Visual Culture or Literature in a World Context.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View EL40LU Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt

1 essay at 2500 words (35%)
1 essay at 3500 words (45%)
1 presentation/interactive group-based activity (10%)
1 seminar participation (10%)

Resit

1 essay at 6000 words (100%)
Essay must address new material not found in previous assessed work submitted for the course.

Formal and informal consultation with students shall commence in the weeks prior to the handing in of assessed work. All students will be made aware from the beginning of the course of the level of engagement, skill and knowledge that they will be encouraged to develop in order successfully complete the course.

Feedback will be provided in both written and verbal form through student meetings and assessment forms. All students will be encouraged to meet with the course coordinator regarding their performance. Students will be able to receive the necessary feedback in sufficient time to modify their performance or adjust their research efforts. All feedback will follow the School's guidelines on assessment feedback.

None.