ENGL470 African-American Literature: The Beginning to 1910

James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Walter Mosley are the names of some of the most recognized African American writers of this century and the last. Few, however, are aware of the traditions from which these writers drew. This course explores the foundations of African American literature through the study of a range of genres, including fiction, poetry, drama, autobiography, and nonfiction. Students will survey works by African American authors from the 1700s up to the early 1900s. Course topics include the folk tradition, the slave narrative, and works by Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammond, Lucy Terry, Frances Harper, William Wells Brown, Charles Chesnutt, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others. We will examine the formal connections within the African American literary and oral traditions—how authors work and rework certain styles, techniques, genres, and structures. We will also examine how this tradition explores a diverse body of ideas, especially those that have to do with identity, freedom, mobility, and security. This course will demonstrate how these concerns are closely connected to how the writing and culture of African Americans reflected on and helped to shape American history.

Section(s):
0101 -   Dennis Winston