Literature: Writing the Atlantic World, 1550 to the Present

An 11-week adult education literature course at Mary Ward Centre, Stratford, exploring 500 years of writing about the Atlantic world, taught by Robert Stearn.

This 11-week course surveys texts produced across five centuries of Atlantic history, by and about enslaved people, sailors, convicts, pirates, traders and aristocrats. Weekly sessions combine a short lecture with seminar discussion, moving from early colonial writing through the Haitian revolution, abolition and national liberation struggles to modern postcolonial works such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!. Students read set texts in advance, with preparation tasks and reading lists provided by the tutor.