AFST 20149 - African American Literature: Black Reconstruction

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

Africana Studies

Description:

If "critique" refers to the analysis of the present towards the transformation of society then this course considers how African American literature has functioned in this creative and critical mode from its inception. Through lecture and class discussion, this course focuses on writings from African American authors pondering the possibilities and goals of reconstructing their communities and the United States at large. We will cover various periods of literary activity, including antebellum slave narratives, the post-Reconstruction era, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black Arts movement. We will cover multiple literary genres - including poetry, slave narrative, novel, and the essay, among others - used in the African American literary tradition placed in their historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. By reading the African American literary tradition in these contexts, we will pursue a number of questions, regarding issues of political agency, the role of the writer as intellectual, the relationship of literature to the folk, and literature as an avenue of recovering alternative histories. We will read material from Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Amiri Baraka, and others.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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