Fall 2005 Courses

English 375: African American Literature to 1900 (English)

MWF 3:30-4:30pm
OM 011

In this survey course, we will trace the development of an African American literary tradition from the end of the 18th century to the turn of the twentieth century, from Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano to Pauline Hopkins and W. E. B. Du Bois. We will explore the longstanding project of writing an African American self as both a literary and a political subject.  We will read closely, critically, and appreciatively from multiple genres, including lyric and “protest” poetry, slave narratives, personal correspondence, essays, short stories, autobiographies, novels, and transcribed oral addresses. We will supplement our exploration of those texts with extensive critical and theoretical readings. Among the themes that will organize the course are: writing as a political act; the figuration of Africa and African-ness; generic innovation, instability, multiplicity, and subversion; changing constructions of race; literary representations of gendered and classed experiences of blackness in the U.S.; aesthetic innovation in relation to political and social change; an ongoing vernacular and/or oral tradition within African American arts and letters; the politics of audience; and the possibilities and limits of literary representation itself.  Requirements for the course include: a 15-minute presentation, three essays of about 7 pages each, and a final exam.  This course will fulfill the college’s domestic diversity requirement and the English department’s “emergent voices” and pre-1900 American literature requirements for majors.

Fall 2005 Course Listings