African American Intellectual History: The Vernacular

Catalog description

AKA Word Up! Focuses on the intersection between the written and spoken word. and explores how narratives of the African American experience reflect and provoke social, cultural, and political activism and transformation. We will delve deeply into 19th and 20th century primary texts, including Negro Spirituals, the poetry of Phyllis Wheatly, Langston Hughes, and Gil Scott Heron, the speeches of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X, the blues of Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, the choreopoem of Ntozake Shange, the rhymes of Grand Master Flash and Cameo, the plays of Dael Orlandersmith and Roger Guenveur Smith, and the spoken word of Saul Williams. We will also explore the power of oral, written, and performed texts and how these forms speak to one another. Key themes will include Race, Gender, Sexuality, Identity Formation and Representation, Resistance to Oppression, Agency, Memory, Narrative Authority, Orality, Performativity, Objectivity, and Subjectivity. We will also delve into African American vernacular forms including call and response, signifying, and playing the dozens.