Black Writers

Catalog description

Through a selection of seminal writings, this course will provide a critical examination of the emergence of literary traditions within the African, African-American, and Caribbean context, in relation to the “Western” canons and dominant literary and artistic traditions in the Americas. This will be an examination of what we may call Existential Blackness-what narratives and literary traditions tell the stories of the Black experiences in the Americas. We will take a look at some of the early works from the beginning of nineteenth century to see how these writings and authors still speak to us on current issues of identity, culture and citizenship, especially on those social and political questions inherent to such discourses as Black Lives Matter.