EN2M2/EN3M2 Global Literary Radicalisms: Proletarian Literature from the Russian Revolution to Anticolonial Resistance
Module Description
From cubist epics of revolution in Russia, to communist lesbian historical romances in France, and general strike novels in Senegal, "proletarian literature" was an astonishingly diverse and experimental literary movement.
This module offers an introduction to the world-literary form of "proletarian literature," which emerged in the early-20th century and became a major literary, intellectual, and political movement in the decades that followed. It explores how literary texts from across the globe responded to the formation of the socialist world in Russia, Asia, and Africa, as well as the explosion of anticapitalist and anticolonial movements within the US and Western Europe. We will examine how overlapping and inter-related social struggles get taken up at the level of form and content in literary works, and why and how literary works were so important to these revolutionary projects.
While the module is primarily focused on the period between the 1920s and 1960s, we will conclude by considering what proletarian literature might look like today and how it responds to the spaces, not of the factory or farm, but the call centre and fulfilment centre.
Assessment
Intermediate Years:
1 x 2,500 word essay (40%) (due Tuesday, Week 11, Term 1)
1 x 4,000 word essay (60%) (due Tuesday, Week 3, Term 3)
Finalists:
1 x 3,500 word essay (40%) (due Tuesday, Week 11, Term 1)
1 x 4,500 word essay (60%) (due Tuesday, Week 3, Term 3)
For more information, see Assessments tab above
Syllabus, 2023/24
Term 1
Week 1 Introduction
Vladimir Mayakovsky "Left March," "Paris. "(A Little Chat with the Eiffel Tower)," and "Brooklyn Bridge"Link opens in a new window Vladimir Mayakovsky: Selected Verse, trans. Dorian Rotenberg (St Petersburg: Soviet Union, 1985 [1925]), 77-8, 87-90, 161-3.
Nazim Hikment "Regarding Art" and "On Shirts, Pants, Cloth Caps and Felt HatsLink opens in a new window" Poems of Nazim Hikment, trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konik (New York: Persea Books, 2002),
Rossen Djagalov "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" From Internationalism to Postcolonialism (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2020)
Michael Denning “Novelists' InternationalLink opens in a new window” Culture in the Age of Three Worlds (Verso, 2004), reprinted in The Novel, Volume 1, ed. Franco Moretti, Princeton University Press, 703-25.
Suggested Secondary Reading:
David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg “IntroductionLink opens in a new window” The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic (2021)
Week 2 Valentin Katayev Time, Forward! (1933) (free online version available here: https://archive.org/details/timeforward0000kata/page/n359/mode/2up)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Katerina Clark “Introduction" and "Appendix ALink opens in a new window” The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (University of Chicago Press, 1981): 3-26; 255-260.
Susan Buck-Morss “Culture for the MassesLink opens in a new window” Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press 2002): 134-173.
Miles M. Sherover, "Magnitogorsk: Epic of Soviet LaborLink opens in a new window." Current History, vol. 36, no. 4, 07, 1932, pp. 405-410.
Week 3 Ousmane Sembène God's Bits of WoodLink opens in a new window (1960)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Monica Popescu, "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War (Duke, 2020)
Walter Rodney, "Marxism and African LiberationLink opens in a new window"
Fredrick Cooper, "‘'Our Strike': Equality, Anticolonial Politics and the 1947-48 Railway Strike in French West AfricaLink opens in a new window." The Journal of African History 37.1 (1996): 81-118.
UNIT 1: PORTS
Week 4 Claude McKay BanjoLink opens in a new window (1929)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Steven Lee "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 1-46.
Winston James "To the East Turn: The Russian Revolution and the Black Radical Imagination in the United States, 1917-1924Link opens in a new window", The American Historical Review, 126.3, (September 2021)1001–1045.
Week 5 Selection of short stories by James Hanley ("The Last Voyage"Link opens in a new window), George Garrett ("Fishmeal"Link opens in a new window), and Eric Walrond ("The Wharf Rats"Link opens in a new window)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Ken Worpole, "Expressionism and Working-Class Fiction.Link opens in a new window" New Left Review 1 (1981): 83-96.
Harris Feinsod, "Canal Zone ModernismLink opens in a new window" English Language Notes 57.1 (2019): 116-128.
Week 7 Kobayashi Takiji Crab Cannery ShipLink opens in a new window (1929)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Heather Bowen-Struyk, "Rival Imagined Communities: Class and Nation in Japanese Proletarian LiteratureLink opens in a new window." positions: east asia cultures critique 14.2 (2006): 373-404.
Samuel Perry, "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2014)
UNIT 2: STRIKES
Week 8 Gastonia
Mary Heaton Vorse "At the Meetin'Link opens in a new window" (excerpt from Strike (1920), New Masses (October 1930): 8-9
Ella May Wiggins "Mill Mother's LamentLink opens in a new window (covered by Pete Seeger)" and other mill balladsLink opens in a new window
Dixon Brothers "Weave Room BluesLink opens in a new window" (1932) and lyricsLink opens in a new window
Dave McCarn "Cotton Mill ColicLink opens in a new window" (1926) and lyrics
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Michael Denning, "IntroductionLink opens in a new window," Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (Verso, 2015): 1-14.
Karen Sieber "The 1929 Loray Mill Strike Was a Landmark Working-Class Struggle in the US SouthLink opens in a new window," Jacobin (September 14, 2022).
Patrick Huber “‘Battle Songs of the Southern Class Struggle’: Songs of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929Link opens in a new window.” Southern Cultures, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, pp. 109–22. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26235589. Accessed 21 Oct. 2023.
Vincent J Roscigno and William F Danaher "Mill-Worker Consciousness, Music, and the Birth of RevoltLink opens in a new window" The Voice of Southern Labor: Radio, Music, and Textile Strikes, 1929-1934 (University of Minnesota Press, 2004): 77-98.
Week 9 Lewis Jones CwmardyLink opens in a new window (1937)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
"The Miners' Next StepLink opens in a new window" (1912)
Elinor Taylor, "Lewis Jones's FictionLink opens in a new window" The Popular Front Novel in Britain, 1934-1940 (Brill, 2014)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Term 2
UNIT 3: THE CITY
Week 1 Sylvia Townsend Warner Summer Will ShowLink opens in a new window (1936)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Glyn Salton-Cox "Sylvia Townsend Warner's Queer VanguardismLink opens in a new window" Queer Communism and the Ministry of Love (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp.77-112.
Jack Lindsay “The Historical NovelLink opens in a new window” New Masses vol 22.03 (1937), pp. 15-16.
Perry Anderson "From Progress to Catastrophe: On the Historical NovelLink opens in a new window" LRB vol 33.15 (28 July 2011)
Carl Douglas "Barricades and Boulevards: Material transformations of Paris, 1795-1871Link opens in a new window" Interstice, vol.8, pp.31 - 42
Week 2 Victor Serge Conquered CityLink opens in a new window (1932) (free online version available here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1932/conqcity/index.htm)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Richard Greeman "Victor Serge and the Tradition of Revolutionary LiteratureLink opens in a new window" TriQuarterly 8 (1967), 39-60.
Adam Morton "Conquered City, Site of Revolutions from Above and BelowLink opens in a new window" The Conversation March 2018.
Week 3 Mulk Raj Anand UntouchableLink opens in a new window (1935)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Katerina Clark, "Indian leftist writers of the 1930s maneuver among India, London, and MoscowLink opens in a new window." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18.1 (2017): 63-87.
Kris Manjapra, "Communist Internationalism and Transcolonial RecognitionLink opens in a new window" in Cosmopolitan Thought Zones, eds. Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra (Palgrave, 2010)
UNIT 4: HOME/SOCIAL REPRODUCTION
Week 4 Selection of poetry by Una Marson ("The Stone Breakers" and "At the Prison Gates, Jamaica, 1937"Link opens in a new window) and Louise Bennett (“Strike DayLink opens in a new window,”); Jean Rhys "Temps Perdi"Link opens in a new window; Claudia Jones, “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!Link opens in a new window”
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Elisabeth B. Armstrong, "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" Bury the Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949 (University of California Press, 2023)
Week 5 Alexandra Kollontai "Vasilia" (also translated as Red Love) (1927)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Alexandra Kollontai "Sexual Relations and the Class StruggleLink opens in a new window," Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings, Allison & Busby, 1977 [1921]
Maria Zavialova "Red Venus: Alexandra Kollontai's Red Love and Women in Soviet ArtLink opens in a new window" in Red Love Across the Pacific: Political and Sexual Revolutions of the Twentieth Century, ed. Ruth Barraclough, Heather Bowen-Struyk, and Paula Rabinowitz, (Palgrave, 2015), 221-231
Kristen Ghodsee, "Introduction," Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism (Bodley Head, 2015).
Kristen Ghosee "A.K. 47 Selections from the Works of Alexandra KollontaiLink opens in a new window" Podcast
Unit 5: Land
Week 7 Mariano Azuela The UnderdogsLink opens in a new window (1915)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Christina Heatherton "How to Make a Map: Small Shareholders and Global Radicals in Revolutionary MexicoLink opens in a new window" Arise: Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution (University of California Press, 2021), 47-71.
Max Parra "Villa and Popular Political Subjectivity in Mariano Azuela's Los de AbajoLink opens in a new window" Writing Pancho Villa's Revolution (University of Texas Press, 2006), 23-47.
Megan Day "How the Mexican Revolution Made John Reed a RedLink opens in a new window" Jacobin (November 2021).
Vladimir Mayakovsky "MexicoLink opens in a new window," trans. Dorian Rottenberg, Vladimir Mayakovsky: Selected Verse (St Petersburg: Soviet Union, 1985 [1925]
Week 8 Mao Dun "Spring Silkworms," "Autumn Harvest," "Winter Ruin"Link opens in a new window (1933); Kang Kyeong-ae “SaltLink opens in a new window” (1934)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
Peter Button "IntroductionLink opens in a new window" Configurations of the Real in Chinese Literary and Aesthetic Modernity (Brill, 2009)
Mao Zedong, "On ContradictionLink opens in a new window" (Verso)
Arif Dirlik, "Mao Zedong thought and the third world/global southLink opens in a new window." Interventions 16.2 (2014): 233-256.
Unit 6: Contemporary
Week 9 Nika Autor Sunny Railways (2023) - film screening in class but please watch the trailerLink opens in a new window.
EP Thompson "Preface," "Omladinska Prudo" and "ConclusionLink opens in a new window," The Railway: An Adventure in Construction (London: The British-Yugoslav Association, 1948), pp. vii-x, 1-33, 75-77.
Week 10 Boots Riley Sorry to Bother You (2018) *NOTE: this is available via Box of Broadcast on the Warwick Library website. You can access this via the TalisAspire list
Jamie Woodcock and Enda Brophy, eds. "The Call Centre Seen From BelowLink opens in a new window," Notes from Below 4.3 (2019)
Indicative reading list
Baldwin, Kate, Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters Between Black and Red, 1922–1963, Duke University Press, 2002.
Clark, Katerina. Moscow, the Fourth Rome : Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931- 1941, Harvard University Press, 2011.
—. Eurasia Without Borders: The Dream of a Leftist Literary Commons, 1919–1943, Harvard University Press, 2021
Dawahare, Anthony, Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora’s Box, University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Denning, Michael Culture in the Age of the Three Worlds, Verso, 1992;
– Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution, Verso, 2015.
Einarsdóttir, Anna Björk “Comintern Aesthetics in the Andes: The Indigenous Revolutionary” Science & Society, Vol. 85, No. 4, October 2021, 443–473
Frazier, Robeson Taj, The East is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination. Duke University Press, 2015.
Ed. Glaser, Amelia M. and Steven S. Lee, Comintern Aesthetics, University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Featherstone, David and Christian Høgsbjergm ed, The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic, Manchester University Press, 2021
Foley, Barbara, Radical Representations: Politics and Form in the US Proletarian Fiction 1929-1941, Duke, 1993.
Glinoer, Anthony, "Proletarian and Revolutionary Literature in a Transnational Perspective" (1920–1940), Journal of World Literature, 6.1, 2020, 84-102.
Hicks, Granville, “Revolution and the Novel,” New Masses 1934
Homberger, Eric, “Proletarian Literature and the John Reed Clubs 1929–1935,” Journal of American Studies, 13.2, 1979, 221-244.
Hubble, Nick. The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question. Edinburgh UP, 2017
James, Winston “To the East Turn: The Russian Revolution and the Black Radical Imagination in the United States, 1917–1924” The American Historical Review, 126.3, September 2021, 1001–1045
James, CLR, World Revolution, 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International, Duke University Press, 2017.
Kelley, Robin .D.G. and Esch, Betsy. “Red like Mao: Red China and black revolution,” Souls: Critical Journal of Black Politics and Culture 1.4, 1999, pp. 6–41.
Kohlmann, Benjamin, “Proletarian Modernism: Film, Literature, Theory,” PMLA 134(5), 2019, 1056-1075.
Lee, Steven, The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution, Columbia University Press, 2015.
Lenin, Vladimir. “On Proletarian Culture”. Collected Works, vol. 31, Progress Publishers, 1974, pp. 316–17.
Manjapra, Kris “Communist Internationalism and Transcolonial Recognition,” in Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas, ed. Sugata Bose and Manjapra (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 172-159.
Perera, Sonali, No Country: Working-Class Writing in the Age of Globalization, New York, NY, 2014.
Rabinowitz, Paula, Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America, University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Rahv, Philip “Proletarian Literature: A Political Autopsy” The Southern Review, 4, Jan 1938.:
Raza, Ali, Franziska Roy, Benjamin Zachariah, The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917–39, Sage Publications, 2014.
