Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes

Catalog description

This course offers an opportunity to read in depth two major writers of the twentieth century, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Friends and one-time collaborators in the New York City of the 1920s, each had important careers that extended long after the Harlem Renaissance period in which they achieved early renown. This class surveys the myriad genres in which each writer worked (short stories, poetry, novels, drama, critical essays, folklore and anthropology). And it will also consider the literary, cultural, and political contexts in which their work was first read, as well as how that work was received, forgotten, recovered, contested, and emulated. The class concludes by examining reading subsequent major authors (Toni Morrison, Harryette Mullen) who drew directly upon Hughes' and Hurston's legacies. (ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)