Blues, Jazz, and Literature.

Catalog description

Students in this interdisciplinary seminar explore how thematic and formal aspects of work songs, spirituals, blues, and jazz have shaped and been shaped by 19th and 20th century (African) American literature and culture. Students will examine the assigned blues, jazz, fiction, novels, and poetry as explorations of the history of racial and class conflict in America; as mediations on individual and collective loss and longing; and as means of aesthetic transcendence. Students will conduct independent research. ( ETHC , GE1B , GEAP , GEDI )