230568 Black British Literature and Culture (S) (SoSe 2006)

As a result of its colonial history, Britain is a multiethnic country today. In the twentieth century, immigration from the former colonies in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa was particularly strong immediately after World War II. This generation of immigrants, and their children and grandchildren have contributed to British culture with the production of literature in all genres, film and music etc. In the 'black' (used here as an umbrella term to be defined) cultural production, the tensions between belonging and displacement, the problems of negotiating values and ideologies across generations, the search for personal and/or group identity and the trauma of a history of enslavement and dispossession are addressed in ways that stand in interesting, and sometimes problematic, relation to the cultural mainstream. In this seminar, we will examine the characteristic features of black British culture in short stories, novels and poems and other cultural products.

The Poems will be made available in a reader; please buy the following texts:

• Barbara Korte and Claudia Sternberg (eds.), Many Voices - Many Cultures: Multicultural British Short Stories (1997)
• Caryl Phillips, Cambridge (1993, any edition)
• Andrea Levy, Small Island (2005, any edition)