Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Era

Catalog description

This course is a graduate seminar on the history of the cultural and intellectual movement in African American life in the 1920s and 1930s known as the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro era characterized by developments in poetry, literature, and in the visual arts. Although Harlem was the center of African American life and culture at the time, this phenomenon had both national and global dimensions. In this course, we will focus on race, gender, class and sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro era beyond Harlem including some discussion of negritude across the African Diaspora and negrismo in the Spanish speaking Caribbean. This course includes an examination of the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro era from multiple perspectives including literary, artistic, cinematic, economic, and philosophical aspects of this critical moment in African American history.