ENGL 544 - African American Experience I

This is a study of African American literature from the antebellum period to the Harlem Renaissance. It examines the formal qualities of selected texts (slave narratives, song lyrics, essays, speeches, sermons, poetry, fiction), as well as the historical and cultural contexts in which they were created and received. Special attention is given to the African roots (oral tradition, spirituality, communal values, etc.) of the literary work; the “double-consciousness,” as W. E. B. Du Bois phrased it, of the African-American experience; and the problem of racism against African Americans dating from the antebellum period to the present day and the corresponding struggle for equal rights. The texts are diverse in artistic form, gender (male and female authors and issues of gender relations), and socio-economic class (African-American bourgeois and folk traditions).

Credits: 3