ENGL470 African-American Literature: The Beginning to 1910

This discussion-based, writing-intensive course charts the development of black literary expression and cultural thought from the beginnings in the African slave trade to the eve of World War I. Ranging across literary genres, from the slave narrative, poetry, essay, short story, and serialized novel, we will examine how black writers, activists, and thinkers grappled with slavery and its legacy of racial thought in what W.E.B. DuBois described as the “color-line.” Slavery and abolition transformed early American culture and society and influenced the rhetorical strategies, formal structures, and figurative language of early African American literature. In our readings, we will ask, among other things, how black writers changed peoples’ ideas about themselves, sent people to war, and built or broke down ideas about “America,” race, gender, and class.

Section(s):
0101 -  Edlie Wong