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Fall 2008
ENGL 393 Black Manhattan: 1915-1940 N. Waligora-Davis TTH 10:50-12:05 This course examines the key figures, political movements, literary, cinematic, and musical traditions that are remembered as the Harlem Renaissance. Reading Locke, Hughes, Larsen, Du Bois, Hurston, Toomer, Schuyler, Johnson, Garvey, and Wright alongside black cinematic and musical (jazz and blues) productions, we take up the political and social implications of the "new Negro" and a distinctly African American modernist aesthetic. We trace the effects of WWI, the interwar period, the Depression, and segregation on black cultural expression. We study the relationship among artistic productions and emerging black nationalisms, black revolutionary tendencies, and radical black political philosophies. Engaging narratives of passing, black science fiction, and representations of the tragic mulatto(a), we will examine not only the intersections of race, gender, and class, the significance of racial gendering, but trace how discourses on black femininity and masculinity were being strategically deployed to articulate the status of blacks in America and to petition for civil rights. There will be two exams, a paper, and a final research project required for this course. |
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