Convenor: Maureen Freely

Tutors: Professor Maureen Freely and Professor Andrew Williams

Term 1. NB: Classes begin in week 2 and continue throughout the term including Reading Week 

Overview

People from many and diverse walks of life feel compelled to write in response to past and present injustices: journalists, creative writers, lawyers, historians, philosophers and sociologists. They may write to seek redress or policy change, or they may simply want to bring wrongs to public attention. But to do so, they face common problems of representation. What forms of writing are appropriate? Which are possible? What ethical and political sensitivities and sensibilities are constraining? Are any liberating? What skills do they need to develop to write effectively and well? How is the matter of ‘truth’ addressed in different media and how does this affect the nature and content of representing wrongs?

On this module we will examine the ethical and practical elements of writing about human rights and wrongs or social injustice in varying contexts and media, looking at classic and contemporary non-fiction and fiction.

We will also offer you a chance to investigate and write about topics of your own choosing. We shall begin to think about these projects when we meet for our first session.

During the module we shall examine writing on selected contemporary crises to illustrate questions of technique, competing political and media agendas, ethical dilemmas and legal constraints that those writing about injustice commonly face.

In addition to weekly group sessions you will also have one-to-one sessions with assigned tutors to discuss and develop your writing for the module. To encourage the development of your writing, you will be asked to complete very short writing assignments that will be set each week. These will provide you with an opportunity to experiment and obtain some feedback on those efforts.

As a preliminary to the module please try to read ‘A Very British Killing: the Death of Baha Mousa’ by A.T. Williams

Other readings will be made available at the beginning of the module in week 1 term 2

 

Indicative programme for Term 1 (subject to confirmation):

Each week we will consider different themes (such as conflict; migration; genocide; erased histories, freedoms) and the ways in which writing has responded to them. We will look at journalism, non-fiction, blogs, fiction, poetry etc. Readings will be provided to address both themes and forms.

We will also look at different writing conundrums in the context of these themes:

How can we understand an injustice? What evidence can we accept? What’s the distinction between truth, lies and perspective? How can we write about it? What barriers to writing about injustice will we face and how can these be overcome?

Throughout, we will provide as much space and time as we can for you to explore your possibilities for writing.

The outline for topics are as follows:

Week 1: Open House with Tutors (details to follow)

Week 2: Full module meeting with the tutors

We will introduce the detail of the module and also begin to explore the difficulties and issues involved in writing about wrongs. In particular, we will debate the relationship between academic and other forms of writing. We shall also create a schedule for your one-to-one writing tutorials over the term.

Please read the following extracts provided:

George Orwell ‘Why I write’

Deborah Levy ‘Things I don’t want to know: Political Purpose’

Week 3: UNDERSTANDING INJUSTICE: Mapping individual and systemic wrongs

In the first part of the session we will look at the concept of injustice and how it might reveal deeper and more varied aspects than perhaps seem obvious when starting out to write. The impact of discovery through research but also the process of writing is something that we will consider. We’ll look at A Very British Killing as an example of an encounter with ambivalence even with what is an obvious injustice and consider how the story has extended beyond the individual wrong to the systemic.

Please read:

A.T. Williams: extracts provided of A Very British Killing

Week 4: REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS

We will consider the impact of images of suffering on the moral, ethical and authorial decisions we make when writing about or responding to wrongs.

Please read the extract from Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others

We will also look in particular at the work of Ai Wei Wei in response to the migrant crisis, Sebastião Salgado and Kevin Carter. What do you make of the images they have produced? How aware do you think the photographers are of the difficult issues we will discuss in class? Where have they managed to break down the barrier between us and them, and at what cost? What images stay with you, and why? And what relationship can image have to writing about human rights?

Please access the award winning work of the photojournalist César Dezfuli whose work appears in Lacuna at: https://lacuna.org.uk/migration/living-limbo-refugees-asylum-italy/

Week 5: OPENING WOUNDS

How societies deal with past atrocities or conflicts remains contested, as we will have seen in Week 3. And how writing can address the questions and issues arising will be our topic this week. We’ll examine this through the lens of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which has attracted considerable attention recently. Two works in particular, both Orwell Prize winners (one for Political Fiction, the other for Non-fiction) show what might be possible.

Please read the extracts provided of:

Patrick Radden Keefe’s ‘Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland’

and

Anna Burns’ ‘Milkman’

Week 6: EVIDENCE AND PERSPECTIVE

Should truth get in the way of a good story? How rigorous must the evidence for your writing be? Are there ethical standards applicable when sifting through the material you want to use in your writing about injustices? What are they and which ones might you decide to break? And how do legal ideas of evidence relate to journalism or other forms of writing.

Readings:

David Vann: extract from Last Day on Earth

Please also access: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/t-magazine/protest-art-betty-tompkins-postcommodity-rirkrit-tiravanija.html

Week 7: GENDER EQUITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

The #metoo campaign, which has given new impetus to women’s rights campaigns world-wide, was born on social media and continues to be sustained by it. But in the same spaces there have also been ugly rifts on questions of gender, with the recent controversy involving JK Rowling being just one example. What are the drawbacks of digital-led campaigning? What other possibilities might we explore as writers with an interest in the complexities of gender equity?

Listening:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/640/five-women

Reading: tbc

Week 8: WHOSE HISTORY?

The recent resurgence of Black Lives Matter has opened up an important and long-overdue debate about the teaching of history. Schoolchildren in the UK learn a great deal about the Stuarts, the Tudors, and the two world wars, but next to nothing about the history of the British Empire and its legacy, and less than nothing about the industrialisation of slavery, without which the industrial revolution would never have happened. Who decides whose histories we learn, and whose we overlook? How can we, as writers, challenge and replace official histories that erase more than they reveal?

Reading: tbc

Week 9: WRITING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE 

We will look at the difficulties and possibilities of writing about climate change and the environment.

Readings are yet to be set as we are hoping to have a guest author speaking on the subject.

Week 10: COVID

The pandemic has opened our eyes to an ever-multiplying multitude of structural injustices. It has shown us how fragile our economies are, how inefficient and ineffectual our institutions, and how urgent the need for change. What part can writers play in this conversation?

 

Assessment

For the MA in Writing:

For MA in Writing students enrolling in 2023: A 5000-word piece of creative writing, with a 1000-word commentary on the aims and processes involved. (30 CATS)

For PT students in their second year: Either an essay of 10,000 words on a topic arising from the module, agreed with the tutor; or a piece of creative writing, 8,500 words in length, on a topic agreed with the tutor, with a 1,500-word commentary on the aims and processes involved (45 CATS).

For the MA in English: a 6,000 word essay (30 CATS).

For the MA in Philosophy and Literature: a 5,000 word essay (20 CATS)

For the LLM in International Development Law and Human Rights and LLM in Advanced Legal Studies: a 2500 word critical essay on a topic of the student’s choice relating to the module; and a 2500 creative work on the same topic. (20 CATS)