ENGL 366 - African-American Literature

Credits: 3 Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. A focused engagement with the African-American literary tradition, from its beginnings in the late 18th century through its powerful assertions in the 21st. The focus of each term’s offering may vary; different versions of the course might emphasize a genre, author, or period such as poetry, Ralph Ellison, or the Harlem Renaissance.

Winter 2021, ENGL 366-01: African-American Literature: Make a Body Riot: Laughter, Resistance, and African American Literature (3). Prerequisite: Take one English course between 201 and 295, and one between 222 and 299. Discussing writing as a mode of salvation in Black Women Writers (1950-1980), Toni Cade Bambara writes, “While my heart is a laughing gland, near that chamber is a blast furnace where a rifle pokes from the ribs.” What does it mean for Bambara to defend her heart, her “laughing gland”? Is laughter/comedy gendered? How does what makes us laugh position us, either as spectator or collaborator? What does the intersection of comedy and performance have to show us about the formation and regulation of racial, class, and gendered identities? How can we, as readers of written texts, account for laughter’s ephemeral and acoustic valences? How might laughter—as release, as physical expression, as indicator of an interior life, or even as protest—help us better understand many aesthetic, thematic, rhetorical, and political aspects of African American literature? In posing these questions, this course centers recurring themes and genres in the development of African American literature throughout the twentieth century—such as the role of Black literature in society; the intersections of race, class, and gender in relation to power; “the afterlives of slavery”; the historical novel; and the role of humor in community formation, among others. Possible authors include Charles Chesnutt, Nella Larsen, Fran Ross, Langston Hughes, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Paul Beatty. (HL) Millan. FDR: HL Staff.