Taylor Schey (he/him), North Carolina State University

Background

The following syllabus is for an upper-level undergraduate course titled “Race-Making and Romanticism” (English 464).

Several years ago (before I arrived at my current institution), my department designed a pair of upper-level courses—“English 464: British Literature and the Founding of Empire” and “English 465: British Literature and the Dissolution of Empire”—that were imagined through the framework of postcolonial theory, with the former intended to cover the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the latter intended to cover the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Both courses were designed to focus on the effects that empire had on the shaping of British culture and the reshaping of Britain as a multicultural society, but neither was originally envisioned to examine how empire contributed to the making of race in the modern world. I decided to change that when I was asked to teach English 464 this semester.

“Race-Making and Romanticism” explores how British literature from 1788 to 1848 both registered and participated in broader processes of race-making, reading largely canonical Romantic-era literary works alongside select pieces of scholarship and some theoretical texts in Black studies, the critical orientation of which informs our approach to the materials. Recent discussions in Romantic studies concerning anti-racism tend to assume that Romanticism would be worth studying only if it were itself anti-racist avant la lettre—an assumption, as Mathelinda Nabugodi has observed, that says more about our own “self-therapeutic desire” than it does about a literature that is coeval with racial slavery and the consolidation of antiblack and white supremacist logics. This course takes a different approach, positing that the value of studying canonical white Romantic literature lies precisely in its implication in the period’s project of race-making. Through attending to what Saidiya Hartman calls “the chameleon capacities of racism,” our goal as a class is to learn how to recognize the often subtle and quotidian logics through which race is produced in the Romantic era so that we can learn how to avoid reiterating and sustaining them in the present.

Description

“Paying attention to race as a political system—which is what it really is—is essential to fighting racism.”—Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Invention (2011)

English 464 uses literature to understand rapid shifts in the making of empire. Our section will focus on transatlantic racial slavery and how British literature from 1788 to 1848 both registered and participated in broader processes of race-making.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England—what we now call the Romantic era—saw tremendous social and political changes, including not only the French Revolution, the genesis of the movement for women’s rights, and the rise of working-class radicalism but also the Haitian Revolution, the British abolitionist movement, and the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Yet the racial order developed in and through transatlantic slavery did not disappear. On the contrary: as the economic infrastructure of the trade and the plantation system in the West Indies were gradually dismantled across the nineteenth century, insidious logics of antiblackness and white supremacy were reproduced and further consolidated. This course studies the literature of Romanticism to learn more about how this happened.

We’ll read poems and novels that explicitly address or acknowledge England’s involvement in the slave trade (e.g. white abolitionist poems; Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park), yet we’ll be equally interested in exploring how racial slavery shapes literary texts and political movements (e.g. white feminism; the worker’s movement in England) that may not seem to be about this reality at all—and in critically querying how these texts and movements, despite their antislavery credentials, might participate in the broader discursive operations through which violent notions of racialized being were being constructed in tandem with ideas of human being. To do so, we’ll also read a few critical works and some theoretical texts from the field of Black studies, the orientation of which will inform our approach to the materials.

In Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (2020), Zakiyyah Iman Jackson argues that “we must attend to the material histories of our categories… even if (or especially if) ultimately our aim is to be rid of received categories because of their world-wrecking capacities and death-dealing effects. Otherwise,” she notes, “we will most likely build on foundations we would be better off destroying.” This course takes Jackson’s claim as its premise. Our goal is to learn how to recognize the often subtle and quotidian logics through which race is produced in the Romantic era so that we can learn how to avoid reiterating and sustaining them in the present.

Grading and Assignments

100 = A+ | 87-89 = B+ | 77-79 = C+ | 67-69 = D+ | below 60 = F

 93-99 = A | 83-86 = B | 73-76 = C | 63-66 = D

 90-92 = A- | 80-82 = B- | 70-72 = C- | 60-62 = D-

Participation and In-Class Assignments……20%

Quizzes……………………………………………………20%

Midterm Take-Home Exam………………………30%

Final Essay………………………………………………30%

Participation and In-Class Assignments

Your preparation for our class meetings is essential. You are required to have completed all the assigned readings prior to the beginning of each class; you are also required to have the readings with you during class. In addition to attending class prepared, you are expected to contribute thoughtfully to our discussions. Please note that participation can take different forms and is not evaluated solely in quantitative terms. For example: An occasional insightful comment or question can be just as valuable to a discussion as frequent commentary. If you’ve been raising your hand and talking often during a meeting, then exercising silence to allow your peers to speak can also be a valuable form of participation. In all cases, you are required to be respectful of your classmates and are expected to be a sensitive interlocutor.

You will occasionally be required to write in class in response to specific prompts. These are informal assignments; on each you will receive either 3 points (completed assignment and demonstrated good effort) or 0 points (did not complete assignment or demonstrated poor effort). Please contact me if you are unable to attend a class with an in-class assignment. These can potentially be completed asynchronously within 48 hours.

Quizzes

Four times during the semester, you will be quizzed in class to ensure that you’re keeping up with the assigned readings and grasping the basics of the course. There will be no surprises or trick questions on these. If you are indeed keeping up with the readings, then the quizzes will be a cinch. Each is worth 5 total points.

Midterm Take-Home Exam

The Midterm Take-Home Exam will allow you to demonstrate your familiarity with the readings and the skills of closely and critically attending to race-making you’ve been developing. It is worth 20 points and is due Friday, February 24 (by 11:59 pm).

For this exam, you’ll be asked to respond to each of the following prompts in the form of a short essay. The essay for prompt (1) should be 3-4 double-spaced pages; the essay for prompt (2) should be 2-3 double-spaced pages. Both should be written in Times New Roman 12-size font, with one-inch margins. 

(1) Romantic-era literature both reflects on and participates in broader processes of race-making that were occurring in period. Choose one of the literary texts we’ve studied together in class and develop an analysis of how it constructs notions of racial difference and allows for insight into the construction of race.

(2) Reflect on the theoretical readings and concepts we’ve covered so far. Which have been the most compelling or eye-opening? Which have been the most difficult or challenging? Which have you most enjoyed? Which might you want to study further in the future? Why? Compose a short personal reflection that addresses some of these questions.

Final Essay

The final essay assignment is your opportunity to explore something—a problem, a question, a theme, a figure, an argument, an individual text—from the course that piqued your interest. You may opt to write an argumentative analytic essay (as is typical for a literature course term paper), but you’re also welcome to write in a different genre such as creative nonfiction or a mixed genre. The choice is yours, and I’ll provide further ideas and instructions as we approach the end of the semester. Just keep in mind that, however you approach the assignment, you’re required to demonstrate a thoughtful engagement with the course materials through close reading and integrating quotations where necessary. The essay must be 6 – 8 double-spaced pages in 12-point Times New Roman font, with one-inch margins. The assignment is worth 20 points and is due Tuesday, May 2 (by 11:59 pm).

Content Warning

Please take this note as a general trigger warning. Some of our readings contain racist language; a few of them include depictions and discussions of racialized violence; and all of them engage difficult subjects. I ask that each of you take care of yourself as you read and think about these texts and that you take responsibility for the impact that they might have on your mental health and emotional well-being. If you know you will be triggered by certain topics, then please contact me; if a particular reading has challenged your mental health, then please get in touch. I’m more than willing to offer accommodations, but I can only do so if I know that you need them.

A Note on the Language We Use

Some of our readings contain racialized language, most notably the word Negro. While this word is not as offensive as the N-word and does not have the same history, it is a term that was developed, wielded, and, in our period, reiterated time and time again by white people (however well meaning) to racialize people from Africa. There is no need for our class to partake in this discursive project, so I ask that you not use the word in class, even when it appears in a reading. Simply say N or N’s when reading passages aloud and this practice will easily become part of how we do things. Just to be clear: the N-word will not be uttered in class.

For a further resource on how to be aware of the language you use regarding slavery, please see P. Gabrielle Forman et al., “Writing About Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.”

Course Schedule (subject to change at my discretion)

Dates	Readings & Assignments
T 1/10	Introductions
R 1/12   Racial Slavery & the Making of the Modern World	Critical Texts: Dorothy Roberts, “The Invention of Race”   Christina Sharpe, “The Wake” from In the Wake: On Blackness and Being Richard Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness”
T 1/17   White Abolitionism and Race-Making	Literary Texts:   Hannah More, “Slavery: A Poem”   Mary Robinson, “The Negro Girl”   Critical Text:   Saidiya Hartman, from Scenes of Subjection   Visual Art:   Josiah Wedgwood, “Am I not a man and a brother?”
R 1/19   Blake: On Whiteness & Blackness	Literary Texts: William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”   William Blake, “The Little Black Boy”   Critical Text:   Matthew Sandler, “On Louise Glück, Minstrelsy, and Abolition”   Visual Art:   William Blake, “Europe Supported by Africa and America”
T 1/24   The Limits of White Guilt	Literary Texts:   Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner   Robert Southey, “The Sailor, Who Had Served in the Slave Trade”   Visual Art:   Gustave Dore, Illustrations of The Rime
R 1/26   Critical Fabulation & the Middle Passage	Literary Text:   M. NourbeSe Philip, selections from Zong!   Critical Text:   Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”   Visual Art:   J. M. W. Turner, “The Slave Ship”
T 1/31   Afropessimism	Critical Text:   Frank B. Wilderson III, “Unspeakable Ethics” from Red, White and Black
R 2/2   Slavery and the “Men of England”	Literary Text:   Percy Shelley, “The Mask of Anarchy”   Critical Text:   Ryan Hanley, “Slavery and the Birth of Working-Class Racism in England, 1814-1833”
T 2/7   “the creation of a being like myself”	Literary Text:   Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (vol. 1)   *Quiz 1
R 2/9   Race & Aesthetics	Literary Text:   Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (vol. 2)
T 2/14   Frankenstein & the Invention of Race	Literary Text:   Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (vol. 3)
R 2/16	NO CLASS (Wellness Day)
T 2/21   Plantation Subtexts	Literary Text:   Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Volume I
R 2/23   A “dead silence”?	Literary Text:   Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Volume II
F 2/24	DUE: Midterm Take-Home Exam (submit by 11:59 p.m.)
T 2/28   Austen’s Open Questions	Literary Text:   Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Volume III
R 3/2   Austen & Race	Critical Texts:   Edward Said, “Jane Austen and Empire” (490 in NCE, but try to read the longer excerpt on Moodle, particularly pp. 80-97)   Yoon Sun Lee, “Jane Austen, Whiteness, and the Phenomenology of Comfort”   Marcos Gonsalez, “Recognizing the Enduring Whiteness of Jane Austen”   Quiz #2
T 3/7   Adapting Austen: The Legacy of White Feminism	Film:   Patricia Rozema, Mansfield Park (1999 film)   Also read: “An Interview with Patricia Rozema”
R 3/9	NO CLASS (I’ll be at a conference)
T 3/14 & R 3/16	NO CLASS (Spring Break)
T 3/21   Figures in Portraiture & Historical Fiction	Film:   Amma Asante, Belle (2013 film)   Visual Art:   Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Elizabeth Murray as well as other eighteenth-century British portraits
R 3/23   Olivia & Dido	Literary Text:   Anonymous, The Woman of Colour (Vol. I)
T 3/28   Women of Color in England	Literary Text:   Anonymous, The Woman of Colour (Vol. II)   Quiz #3
R 3/30	NO CLASS (I’ll be at a conference)
T 4/4   White Feminism’s Analogies	Literary Text: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Author’s Preface and chs. I – XI)
R 4/6   “fair as lilies”	Literary Text: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (chs. XII – XX)
T 4/11     White Feminism’s Antipodes	Literary Text: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (chs. XXI – XXVIII)   Critical Text: Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress” (read pp. 476-481 in NCE)
R 4/13   “a fiery West Indian Night”	Literary Text: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (ch. XXIX – end)   Critical Text: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, from “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”   Quiz #4
T 4/18	Discuss ideas for final essays
R 4/20	Concluding remarks
T 5/2	DUE: Final Essay (submit by 11:59 p.m.)