Black Poetry & Social Movements
AFAM 215
Fall 2026
| Section:
01
|
This course proposes that poetry has been integral to nearly every movement for Black liberation. We will immerse ourselves in selections of Black diasporic poetry and poetics from its beginning in the 18th century to its present practices. The course reads poetry in the context of Black social movements. It considers Black poetry as an aesthetic and social form (primarily in the US, but with some attention to Canada, Britain, and the Anglophone Caribbean). How have Black poets responded formally to world-altering changes in geography, culture, and political economy from the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century to the afterlives of slavery in the 21st? How have Black poets sought to transform dehumanizing accounts of Black life by innovating Western poetic forms, animating them anew with insurgent Black life, and creating their own expressive forms for a world otherwise? And how, in turn, has Black poetry shaped cultural and social movements -- from abolition in the early 19th century, to anti-lynching in the late 19th and early 20th, to the Black Arts Movement and Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, or the Black Lives Matter movement of today? We will take note of how poems circulated (orally, in print, and digitally), and how these modes of circulation help us understand geopolitical conjunctures at the moments of their making. Altogether, we will examine how contemporary poetic communities and social movements draw from and build on past poetic practices whose freedom dreams are, as yet, unrealized. |
|
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
None |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
|
Fulfills a Requirement for: (African American Studies Minor)(African American Studies) |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
: Course reader with selections by Phyllis Wheatley, F.E.W. Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Kamau Brathwaite, M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, Claudia Rankine, and Terrance Hayes.
|
Examinations and Assignments:
: blog posts; critical analysis paper; primary document annotation; final project
|
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
: |
| Instructor(s): Modi,Jessica Marion Times: ..T.R.. 10:20AM-11:40AM; Location: OLIN204; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 3 | JR major: 4 | | |
| | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 3 |
|
|