ENGL 2316 - Black Literature in the U.S.

Arts & Sciences Department
This course offers a sequential look at literature by Black Americans, beginning with slave narratives and abolitionist speeches and moving to writings from Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. We will read a range of texts that will include poems, short stories, novellas, autobiographical vignettes and novels that address topics of race, racism, slavery, sexism, racial passing, colorism, immigrant experience, feminism, and resistance. Writers whose work will be read and discussed may include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Toni Morrison, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Toni Cade Bambara, Jean Toomer, W.E.B. DuBois, Maya Angelou, Edwidge Danticat and Octavia Butler. The larger goal of the course is the recognition of Black Literature as products of social activism, significant artifacts of American history, and as tools for social justice.
credit(s): 3
Prerequisite(s): ENGL 1100