HIST-LIT 90FU: British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa

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British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa

HIST-LIT 90FU, Fall 2024

Wednesdays, 3-5PM

Dr. Laura Quinton (lquinton@fas.harvard.edu)

 

 

Saltburn (2023)

 

Today, the United Kingdom is considered one of the world’s “soft power superpowers.” How did this small island come to wield such outsize global influence? Moving from Voltaire’s rhapsodizing about eighteenth-century England to present-day infatuations with James Bond, Harry Potter, and the Royal Family, this course explores how British art and culture have historically produced alluring national images. What “British” qualities have captured the world’s imagination, and to what extent are they a fantasy that overlooks dynamics of class and multiculturalism? What countries, leaders, and popular audiences around the world have latched on to these images, and to what end? Have they launched revolutions or upheld hierarchies? Considering these questions, we will examine British performing and visual arts, literature, sports, education, and fashion as channels of power - deployed at times by British elites and politicians - and chart the relationship between this nation’s creative ascendence and its imperial decline.

 

Assignments & Grading

Participation                                  20%

Scavenger Hunt                             15%

Paper 1                                             15%

Paper 2                                             15%

Final Research Paper proposal   5%

Final Research Paper                    30%

 

Scavenger Hunt (15%)

Over the course of the semester, you must write 3 brief discussion posts (one paragraph each) on 3 separate moments when you encountered British culture in your day-to-day life. Did you eat fish and chips for dinner in Harvard Square? Drink tea at Lowell House or watch the Head of the Charles? Read a novel by a British author, listen to "Murder on the Dancefloor," or watch Bridgerton or Ted Lasso? This is an open-ended assignment - get creative, and have fun!

 Short Paper 1 (3-4 pages) (15%)

Choose one primary source that we have discussed in Unit 1 and analyze it in-depth in a formal essay.

Short Paper 2 (4-5 pages) (15%)

Choose one primary source that we have discussed in Unit 2 and analyze it in-depth in a formal essay. In this paper, you must also incorporate one scholarly text of your own choosing, using it to inform your close, careful analysis of the primary source.

Final Research Paper (approx. 10 pages) (30%)

For this extended research paper, you may: 1) Analyze one cultural product or theme that we have discussed in class in greater depth; OR 2) Explore the “soft power” influence of a cultural product or theme that we have not discussed in class. You will write a 1-2 page Proposal (5%) that describes your topic, sources, and central research question(s).

 

SCHEDULE (*subject to change)

 

UNIT 1: Cultural influence before 1900

 

Week 1 (Sept. 4): What is soft power? Does Britain have it?

• Ian Buruma, “Churchill’s Cigar,” Granta 65 (1999)
• Maya Jasanoff, “Mourn the Queen, Not Her Empire,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2022

 

Week 2 (Sept. 11): Anglomanie, Shakespearomanie, and Enlightenment Europe

• Voltaire, Letters concerning the English Nation (1733), excerpts
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795-6), excerpts

 

Week 3 (Sept. 18): “Moral Capital”: Slavery and British Liberty in the Age of Revolutions

• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African (1789), excerpts
• John Philip Simpson, The Captive Slave (Ira Aldridge) (1827)

 

Week 4 (Sept. 25): The “Civilized” Imperialist

• Rudyard Kipling, “Mowgli’s Brothers,” in The Jungle Books (1894-5)
• Edward Said, “Jane Austen and Empire,” in Culture and Imperialism (1993)
• Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (2020), excerpt

 

UNIT 2: Building Cultural Capital

 

Week 5 (Oct. 2): The Lure of Aristocracy

• Downton Abbey, season 1, episode 1
• Anne de Courcy, The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses who Married into the English Aristocracy (2018), excerpt
• Jeremy Egner, “A Bit of Britain Where the Sun Still Never Sets,” New York Times, Jan. 3, 2013

 

Week 6 (Oct. 9): Power over the Airwaves

• Broadcast recording of T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
• David Hendy, The BBC: A Century on Air, chapter 2
• Emma Robertson, "'I Get a Real Kick out of Big Ben': BBC versions of Britishness on the Empire and General Overseas Service, 1932-1948," Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 28/4 (2008)
• Darrell Newton, "Calling the West Indies: The BBC World Service and Caribbean Voices," Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 28/4 (2008)

 

Week 7 (Oct. 16): Legends of World War II

• Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk (2017)
• George Orwell, “England Your England” (1941)
• Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004), excerpt

 

Week 8 (Oct. 23): Dance and Theater Diplomacy amid Decolonization

• The Royal Ballet in The Sleeping Beauty (1890)
• Margot Fonteyn, Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography (1975), excerpt
• Caroline Ritter, Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire (2021), chapter 1

 

UNIT 3: Creative Powerhouse

 

Week 9 (Oct. 30): James Bond's Cold War

• Guy Hamilton, Goldfinger (1964)
• Mikolaj Kunicki, “A Socialist 007: Eastern European Spy Dramas in the Early James Bond Era,” in Jaap Verheul, ed., The Cultural Life of James Bond: Spectres of 007 (2020)

 

Week 10 (Nov. 6): Music Invasions

• Selections of British hits from the 1960s & 1970s:
  • The Beatles, “Love Me Do” (1962)
  • The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965)
  • Elton John, “Your Song” (1970)
  • David Bowie, “Starman” (1972)
  • Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975)
• Carolyn Stevens, The Beatles in Japan (2019), chapter 1
• Jorge Saavedra Utman and Toby Miller, “The insignificance of David Bowie: Latin America’s refusal of a ‘world icon,’” Continuum 31/4 (2017)
• Elton John, Me (2019), excerpt

 

Week 11 (Nov. 13): Migrations

• Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), excerpts
• Steve McQueen, Lovers Rock (2020), from McQueen’s Small Axe film series

 

Week 12 (Nov. 20): Royal Sagas

• The Crown, season 5, episode 3: “Mou Mou”
• Hilary Mantel, “Royal Bodies,” The London Review of Books, Feb. 21, 2013
• Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, Spare (2023), excerpt

 

Week 13 (Nov. 27): NO CLASS (Thanksgiving break)

 

Week 14 (Dec. 4): Anglomania in Decline?

• Zadie Smith, "On Killing Charles Dickens," The New Yorker, July 3, 2023
• Aja Romano, “Harry Potter and the Author Who Failed Us,” Vox, June 11, 2020
• Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg, The Club: How the English Premier League became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports (2018), excerpt
• Joel Kim Booster, "Pride and Prejudice on Fire Island" (2022)
• Dua Lipa, “Dance the Night” (2023)