African American Read-In Engaged Learning Experience

Catalog description

This course will allow students to study African American literature, culture, history, and arts in connection with an annual public event, the African American Read-In (AARI). The AARI, promoting literacy and appreciation of African American literature, is a national event established in 1990 under the auspices of the National Council of Teachers of English. It has become a regular feature of Black History Month celebrated by community, neighborhood, and church groups as well as schools and institutions of higher education throughout the United States and elsewhere on a given Sunday and Monday in February attracting more than a million participants annually. This course offers students an engaged learning experience in which they will produce original intellectual and artistic content to be presented publicly at an AARI event on campus. Students will study texts from a range of historical periods and/or genres, and thus gain a solid introduction to the African American literary tradition. At the same time, the primary organizing principle of the course will be a particular theme that both allows a broad and coherent overview of a significant cultural or historical topic and engages issues of cultural diversity in the United States. The specific theme, thus, will bring the study of African American literature into a broader interdisciplinary context that intersects with African American culture, history, identity, and the struggle for equality. Students will study texts that relate to this annual theme and participate in a relevant field trip (museum, theater, cultural site, library, etc.) to deepen their understanding of the significance and contexts, social, historical, cultural, artistic of these materials and this theme. They will then develop this knowledge through creative and critical engagements into exhibitions, presentations, or performances to communicate their insights about a particular author, text, or topic in in the African American literary tradition. As shapers of the AARI program on their campus, class members will also have a voice in designing and planning the AARI as well as a stake in its overall success. As this course necessarily spans semesters, students who enroll in the Fall course will be expected to enroll in the Spring course in order to present their projects at the AARI in February. Only students who were enrolled in the Fall course will be permitted to enroll in the Spring, as it is the culmination of the same course.