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Black Radicalism in the Americas - HIS00123I

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  • Department: History
  • Module co-ordinator: Prof. Henrice Altink
  • Credit value: 30 credits
  • Credit level: I
  • Academic year of delivery: 2022-23
    • See module specification for other years: 2021-22

Module summary

Starting with Haiti in 1804, slavery was gradually abolished in the Americas in the nineteenth century. But Abolition did not bring racial equality. This course explores how people of African descent in the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean tried to achieve full and equal citizenship from abolition to the Black Lives Matter movement. It focusses not just on organisations, such as the UNIA and Black Panthers, but also on spontaneous actions, including strikes, and popular expressions of black radicalism, such as music.

Proceeding in a roughly chronological order, the module will show that demands for inclusion in the nation as full and equal citizens coexisted with exclusionary practices. Women, for example, were often excluded from leadership positions in black radical organisations. And it will also highlight the tension in the black radical tradition between separatism and integration. The module will not only draw comparisons between black radical traditions in different parts of the Americas, paying attention to different racial regimes, but also explore the exchange of black radical ideas and practices across the region. By focussing on the radical ways in which black people across the Americas have tried to resist anti-black racism in the long twentieth-century and the impact of their actions on politics and culture, this module will highlight the agency of black people in history.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Spring Term 2022-23 to Summer Term 2022-23

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

  • To provide students with the opportunity to study particular historical topics in depth;
  • To develop students’ ability to examine a topic from a range of perspectives and to strengthen their ability to work critically and reflectively with secondary and primary material; and
  • To combine seminar preparation and discussion of the topic being studied with extended independent work on a project devised by the student.

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

  • Have acquired a deep knowledge of the specific topic studied
  • Have developed their ability to use and synthesise a range of primary and secondary sources
  • Be able to evaluate the arguments that historians have made about the topic studied
  • Have developed their ability to study independently through seminar-based teaching
  • Gain experience of working collaboratively through an assessed group project

Module content

Teaching Programme:

This 30-credit module is taught through a weekly two-hour seminar run from weeks 2-10 in the spring term and a four week period of project work undertaken in weeks 1-4 of the summer term. Students will complete their group project work within that period and tutors should arrange to be available for consultation with students twice during that time. There will be no formal seminar teaching during this period.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

  1. Racial systems in the Americas – an introduction

  2. Post-emancipation radicalism

  3. Garveyism

  4. The 1930s: strikes and anti-fascism

  5. Black Marxism

  6. Black (inter)Nationalism

  7. Black Power

  8. Hip Hop and transnational organising

  9. Black Lives Matter

Music has always been an important vehicle for black radical ideas. In groups you will examine messages about race in the work of an artist or band, and contextualise these messages by drawing upon your knowledge of the organisations, individuals and events studied in the module.

Assessment

Task Length % of module mark
Groupwork
Group Project		 N/A 33
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled)
Open Exam - Black Radicalism in the Americas		 8 hours 67

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

Formative assessment will be a group presentation between weeks 5 and 7 of the spring term.

For summative assessment students take a 24-hour open exam in the summer term assessment period, usually released at 11:00 on day 1 and submitted at 11:00 on day 2. For those taking two Explorations modules the 24-hour open exams are held on consecutive days, with both papers released at 11:00 on day 1 and both due for submission on 11:00 of day 3.

Students also submit a piece of written work for their group project of no more than 3,000 words in week 5 of the summer term.

The exam carries 67% of assessment and the project element 33% for this module.

Students who need to be reassessed in the project component of this module (for example due to Exceptional Circumstance) will be required to submit in the summer reassessment period a shorter individual project (2,000 words) which should include a short reflection (500 words max) on group work, considering how this project could be expanded if a team of three to four people were working on it. Students should consider how they would divide up the research tasks, and reflect briefly on problems which might arise and how they would manage them. Module tutors will advise on the content and design of this project.

Reassessment

Task Length % of module mark
Groupwork
Group Project		 N/A 33
Online Exam - 24 hrs (Centrally scheduled)
Open Exam - Black Radicalism in the Americas		 8 hours 67

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will typically receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.

Work will be returned to students in their discussion groups and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their procedural work with their tutor (or module convenor) during student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 20 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (Oxford: OUP, 2004).

Gad Heuman, The Caribbean (London: Bloomsbury, 2018)

Robin Kelley, Freedom dreams: the Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.