4.00 Credits
Africana Studies, American Studies What special problems arise when the presentation of ourselves into literary culture contributes to or challenges an already diminished social presence and power? In what ways would we want to create and imagine ourselves, remember our history, and construct our future? This twosemester course explores African American literature from the Colonial era to the Harlem Renaissance and examines the various forms- including poetry, autobiography, essay, novel, and play-and voices that African Americans have used to achieve literary and, consequently, social authority. Authors include Wheatley, Douglass, Jacobs, Chesnutt, Du Bois, Hopkins, Toomer, Larsen, Hughes, McKay, Hurston, Locke, Schuyler, Thurman, Hughes, Fauset, Hurston, Wright, Baldwin, Ellison, Baraka, Sanchez, Giovanni, Reed,Morrison,Wilson, and Whitehead.