230398 Black Voices: Creativity and Resistance (BS) (SoSe 2025)

This class will provide a broader African American cultural and historical framework in which to read and interpret selected works by major black writers from the U.S., the Caribbean, and Canada in context. The objective is to discuss black poems, essays, excerpts from novels and memoirs as cultural, aesthetic and political texts. Students will engage with selected writings by authors like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Edwidge Danticat, Afua Cooper among others. Thematically we will discuss the issues of identity, blackness, creativity, coloniality, and resistance at the intersection of age, class, gender, citizenship, and race. The seminar will take place in four long intensive sessions. During the seminar each student is required to give an oral presentation about a selected literary text to gain credit points. All text materials will be provided latest by late February 2025. The instructor will provide a ZOOM meeting in February 2025 to schedule the agenda for all sessions of the seminar.