ENG 229-01 - The Tradition of African American Literature

4 credits (Fall Term 2)

Slavery and its Afterlives. In her book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), Saidiya Hartman introduces the idea of slavery and its afterlives: If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery–skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment (6). It is these afterlives upon which we will focus in the course: The United States’ persistent clinging to inequality and the African American literary and cultural responses. We will begin in our current contemporary moment and stretch back to the foundation of the United States and transatlantic slavery. In the wake of a burgeoning output of Books, TV shows and films about slavery, we’ll ask why it seems that America is more obsessed with depictions of enslavement now than ever before. Along the way, we’ll scrutinize social media campaigns such as #NotAnotherSlaveMovie, analyze essays from Toni Morrison, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and more, and read novels from James Baldwin, Gayl Jones and Octavia Butler in order gain insight regarding genre, canon and culture that will carry us through the course. In all readings we will discuss the ways in which African/Negro/Black/African American writers use the written word as activism in the fight for full enfranchisement.

Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lavan