FWS: The African American Short Story

Catalog description

The short story is an ideal genre through which one might gain a basic introduction to African American literature and its major themes. The foundational contributions to the development of the antebellum era of the nineteenth century were made by both black male and female authors during the fecund black literary renaissance of the 1850s, including The Heroic Slave by Frederick Douglass and The Two Offers by Frances E.W. Harper. We will consider short stories by Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Charles Chesnutt, John Henrik Clarke, Ernest J. Gaines, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Ann Petry, Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright. Through weekly entries in a reading journal, the production of six papers, and periodic in-class writing exercises, students will produce an extensive portfolio of written materials over the course of the semester.