Two Interesting and Timely Spring 2009 Courses Seek Students
Both these classes are taught by Professor Jennifer James.
185. 10 TR 12.45-2
Slavery, Memory and History in Black Women’s Writing
This course explores how black women’s literature of the 20th and 21st century recalls and revises the memory and history of slavery in the Carribean and the U.S. The readings will range from fiction and memoir to history and cultural studies, including Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol; Stephanie M. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance; Toni Morrison, A Mercy and/or Beloved; Gayl Jones, Corrigedora; Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose; Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.We will give particular attention to the role literature plays in a nation’s “collective” memory of traumatic history.We will also study the relationship between slave women’s culture, such as quilting and song, to literary production.
EN184.10 TR 4.45-6
The Literature of Black America II
This course will examine some of the most influential writers, movements and trends in 20th century African American literature from the period popularly known as “Harlem Renaissance” to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s/70’s. Some writers will include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Lorainne Hansberry, Alice Walker and Amiri Baraka.
