3 HOURS, 3 CREDITS A study of the writing of African Americans from colonial times to the present, with special attention to infl uential African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Toomer, Hughes, Wright, Brooks, Ellison, Baldwin, Baraka and Malcolm X. Readings in novels, plays, autobiographies, short stories, poems, folktales and essays will explore a wide range of African-American aesthetic responses to life in the United States. Prerequisites: ENG 101, and ENG 102 or ENG 201

Students will read and write about the cultural and artistic forces that gave birth and shape to what has come to be called African American Literature. From the slave narratives and folktales of the 18th and 19th centuries to contemporary fiction and drama, these works make up a body of literature that is defined through race even as it transcends it.