African-American Literature

Catalog description

This class introduces students to stories, novels, autobiographies, speeches, essays, poems, memoirs, and/or plays by and about celebrated African American writers to examine the historical, cultural, and social dimensions of the African American experience. This course will explore how these literatures raise fundamental issues relevant to people of all races and ethnicities. Historical time periods and genres of significant focus may include slave narratives, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights era, Afrofuturism, and social justice movements of the present day. Readings may include works of Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Nella Larsen, Roxanne Gay, Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, and others