ENG 273 - African American Literature

1 course unit

Explores important literary works for what they reveal about the ever-changing status of the Black condition and blackness in the United States and about the unique aesthetic, formal, and ideological innovations developed by African and African descendant writers in the U.S. Some of the major questions that guide our study include: What does a work reveal about its historical and social context─e.g., slavery, colonization, reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, and beyond? How do power relations and class struggle intersect with aesthetic choice and composition? How do gender and sexuality shape the production of African American literature? The course may also consider interactions between African American literary production and the cultural movements of the greater African diaspora, Europe, and the Americas.
Meets general academic requirement DE and HU.