London Program
Course Descriptions for Autumn 2008:

1) Multicultural Vernacular Literatures of the British Isles
Michael Murrin
Weeks 1 - 3

This course will cover the vernacular tradition in the British Isles: the Celtic contribution (Irish and Welsh), Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Anglo-Norman French. Texts will include Beowulf, the Battle of Maldon and the Battle of Brœnan Burg from Old English; the Battle of Moytura (a battle originally between gods and giants), the Tain (an epic in the Ulster cycle with Cœchulainn as its hero), and the Voyage of Bran Son of Ferbal from Irish, Egil's Saga from Old Norse: the Lays of Marie de France from Anglo-Norman French; the Four Branches from the Welsh Mabinogion; and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from Middle English. A paper will be required and perhaps an oral examination.

Excursion: Wales (with Professors Murrin and Helsinger)

2) London and Its Borders (1840–1870)
Elizabeth Helsinger
Weeks 4 - 6

This course will focus on two important works of fiction that represent Victorian Britain through their uneasy mappings of center and periphery, native and alien other, circa 1850. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), set on the open moors of turn-of-the-century Yorkshire—another country for urban readers from London and the south—uses its representations of national otherness to portray the uneasy relations between center and periphery, native and other, as a state of perpetual potential revolution between antagonists: of genre (domestic versus gothic fiction), geography and culture (south/north, civilized/wild, metropolitan/provincial, English/other), and language, gender, and class. Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1852–53), set in mid-Victorian London, explores many of the same apparent divides by focusing on London’s internal others: the slums that surround and threaten its legal and domestic centers, the alien inhabitants at the metropolitan heart. To more fully contextualize these central fictions in the literary and visual landscapes of Victorians at mid-century, we will use selected poetry, non-fiction, and visual arts together with site visits to Wales and Yorkshire and to London museums and neighborhoods. Several short papers and response papers, plus one in-class group presentation from on-the-ground research into some aspect of Victorian London. (Note: Students will be expected to read the core texts, Wuthering Heights and Bleak House, over the summer.)

Excursion: Haworth

3) Slums and Slumming: Late Victorian Writing on and of London's East End
Elaine Hadley
weeks 8 - 10

The East End of London played a significant role in the social imagination of Victorian Britain. The area east of the city, down both sides of the river Thames from the Tower of London, the East End housed the burgeoning urban populations of this period. The subject of reformers, social commentators, and, most notably, Dickens, this area of London typified throughout the century the ills of urbanism. In this class, we will focus on the last third of the century, as the country slipped into economic depression, and the East End became, yet again, the source of national and imperial crisis and the object of investigation. We will read a wide variety of literary (George Gissing, Arthur Morrison), social scientific (Charles Booth, James Greenwood) and charitable texts (William Booth of the Salvation Army, Octavia Hill) that focus on the distinctive culture, economy, and inevitably "problems" that this region manifested. In so doing, we will capture the amazing range of writing directed at these neighborhoods and its inhabitants: social realist fiction, investigative reporting, Christian evangelism, early modernist fiction, and social manifestos. We will also go on foot and explore a region of London that has undergone massive change since the late nineteenth century, but still retains vestiges of this earlier era.

Excursion: Walking trip of the East End

4) London: City of Nations
Royce Mahawatte, University of the Arts London
weeks 1 - 6, 8 - 10

This lecture series will examine how the heritage of empire shaped patterns of migration to London and the often hostile responses to it; how economic, political and social change since the Second World War has made Britain a more integrated country; and why immigration and race relations remain controversial issues. These lectures will explore minority histories in depth, including: the contribution they have made to London; how their own identities have been altered through closer engagement with British culture; and, just as important, how minorities interact with each other. Lectures will also look at the representation of race in literature, and students will gain some first hand experience of key groups and their impact by visiting areas of London with large ethnic communities. Overall, the course will show how British national identity has been constructed and experienced over the last century and what it really means to be British in one of the most diverse countries in the world today.

Excursions: Multiple fieldtrips to different London neighborhoods.