Spring 2008 Courses

English 384-01: Langston Hughes: Global Writer (Moore)

M/W/F 9:40-10:40am, CARN 404

The great African American writer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is widely remembered as the "poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance." Though richly true, this title masks Hughes' remarkably wide-ranging and internationalist career. He published in every imaginable genre – poetry, novel, short story, children's literature, humor, memoir, drama, song lyric, history, and more – and collaborated with writers from Latin America, Soviet Central Asia, Africa and the Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean. He was also the first black writer of any nation to make his living exclusively from writing.

This course ranges chronologically and widely through Hughes's career, attending to multiple dynamics, politics, and cultural histories. Texts will include The Collected Poems, The Ways of White Folks, The Big Sea, essays from The Chicago Defender, 1942-62, The Return of Simple, I Wonder as I Wander, A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, From Harlem to Johannesburg, and many essays. Written assignments may include research on little-known or archival texts, making use of materials not available to the general public.

Required preparation: students should come to the course with good background in one or more of a) literary (especially poetry) studies, b) American race studies, and c) inter-national or global studies. Few class members will have all three, but the class as a whole will embody all of these preparations.

*Cross-listed with AMST 394-01 and INTL 384-01*

Spring 2008 Course Listings