AFCA 346 - Early African American Print Culture

FDR: HL Literature Distribution
Credits: 3

Prerequisite: an English course numbered between 201 and 295 and another English course numbered between 222 and 299. Same as ENGL 346. This course offers an examination of the early African American print culture as a way to explore both the larger history of print in the early American republic through the 19th century and the consolidation of a Black identity. We pay particular attention to the collective development of Black print personas and public discourse as well as to the development of the early African American novel. We may also consider several aesthetic and rhetorical strategies at play, such as the representation of voice through text and the ways print-black type on white pages-served as a metaphor for the (re)production of racializing paradigms. Possible writers and texts include Phillis Wheatley Peters, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, James McCune Smith, the “Afric-American Picture Gallery”, William Wells Brown, and The Garies and Their Friends. There will be opportunities for archival research, either through Special Collections or digital databases.