This course is an introduction to African American literature. As such the texts we read in this course will vary in genre and span from the late 18th century to the early 21st century, and the course lectures and discussions will introduce students to some of the significant historical and political context of black literature as well as key periods, questions, themes and tropes at play in the black literary tradition. This class though is not quite a survey course so while many of the texts on the syllabus are indeed widely anthologized texts in the black cannon, the course also includes some lesser anthologized texts. For example we will begin our course with a reading of Henry “Box” Brown’s slave narrative rather than on Frederick Douglass’s seminal Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
We will enter the black literary-artistic tradition with a focus on the relationship between blackness and matter. On the one hand we will interrogate how black authors and artists have represented the relationship between the matter (materiality) of black life and the matters (concerns) of black life as represented. On the other hand, we will consider what these texts suggest about the relationship between the matter of blackness and the blackness of matter. In asking these questions, we endeavor to both introduce students to the black literary and artistic tradition and to do so in a way that helps students think about the history and the stakes of literary/artistic production by black artists working in the wake of “Black Lives Matter.”
Required Texts:
Much of the texts for this course are in the public domain or excerpted enough that I can supply you with a free pdf version. However you will need to acquire a copy of the following four texts, which should be available for purchase through the BC bookstore:
Henry’s Freedom Box
Freedom Song: The Story of Henry Box Brown
Black No More
Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo
Black Matter 