04/06/2012
Check out this fall 2012 course!
ENGL4670: Modern African-American Literature
Kaplan
CRN: 15883
Sequence F (1:35-3:15 Tu/F)
Fulfills CAS Core Diversity and NU Core Comparative Cultures
With a particular focus on three historical moments — the Harlem Renaissance; modern African American literature after World War II; and the contemporary period — this course will consider African American literature both as a distinct tradition and in relation to the mainstream, white, literatures to which it so often responds. We will place this literature in an historical context which includes slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, the Great Migration; the Great Depression, wars, and modern civil rights. At the same time, we will ask about the ways in which formal categories such as naturalism, realism, and modernism do – and do not – fit this tradition. Themes that help us connect our reading will include identity, invisibility, authenticity, recognition, blindness, double consciousness, memory, and others. As a class we will parse out literary commonalities and differences, with attention also to demystifying and strengthening the skills of literary and cultural analysis. Among the authors we will read are: James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Anna Deveare Smith. Assignments will include short reading responses and papers.
Note: DAAS majors/minors will receive departmental credit.
