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CS92PROD
Introduction to African American Literature
AFAM 202
Spring 2024
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: ENGL 240, AMST 275

This course will introduce students to African American literature. It will be divided into two parts. The first will pay particular attention to the experience of enslavement by focusing on several unique primary and secondary textual couplings, including (but not limited to): Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845) and Saidiya Hartman's "Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America" (1997); and Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861) together with Hortense Spillers's "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" (1987). In addition to these classic 19th-century slave narratives and contemporary sources, then, the first part will also include supplementary readings by Kenneth Warren, David Blight, Angela Davis, Alexander Weheliye, Spillers, Hartman, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Shelly Eversley, Jennifer Morgan, and Frank Wilderson. The second part will focus on 20th- and 21st-century African American literature and literary criticism. It will bring together a wide range of readings from across genres and disciplines, attempting to sketch out the major aesthetic and political features of the black literary project. Authors here will include W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Michael Rudolph West, Hazel Carby, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Alain Locke, Shane Vogel, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Asia Leeds, Roderick Ferguson, Claude McKay, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Teju Cole, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Cornel West, Claudia Rankine, Warren, and Fred Moten.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA AFAM
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (AFAM-MN)(AFAM)(AMST)(EDST)(ENGL)(ENGL-Literature)
Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89%

Last Updated on MAR-28-2024
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