230605 The Afro-American Presence in U.S. American Literature (S) (WiSe 2010/2011)

This introductory class to the African American presence in US American literature will explore aspects of the black American literary canon in historical periods such as, among others, slavery, the Reconstruction Period, Harlem Renaissance, Realism, and Black Arts Movement, and literary forms --autobiography, poetry, drama, novel, essays, speech, etc. Students will acquire the historical knowledge required to discuss and examine African American literature, a tradition that, as Henry Louis Gates and Nellie Y. McKay remind us, in their Introduction to /The Norton Anthology of African American Literature/,/ /emerged out of resistance "against the greatest odds" aiming to proof that "people of African descent [...] were, indeed, full and equal members of the community of rational, sentient beings, that they could indeed, write."

Bibliography

Texts Required

Gates, Henry Louis and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed with CDs. New York: Norton, 2004.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place
Randall, Alice. The Wind Done Gone
Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple