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Summer Session One 2008
(May 19 - June 30)
(There are no upper division courses
in Summer Session Two this year.)
English 150: Contemporary African American Literature
Class ID# 6457
Professor Carol Allen
Mondays & Wednesdays 1:00 to 3:40 PM
This course will satisfy a requirement in the Literature
concentration. It can also be used to satisfy a literature
requirement in the Creative Writing concentration or in the
Writing & Rhetoric concentration.
This course charts the contours of African American literature
composed since 1975 and the critical discourse that surrounds
it. The course will be divided into units based on genre for
no other reason than that this body of writing is so diverse
that thematic clustering makes little sense. Therefore, because
of this decision, we will explore how contemporary African
American writers are bending and blending genre to fit their
needs: innovation in both form and thematic choice. Over the
next few weeks, we will encounter works by the most notable
contributors to this tradition. I urge you to consider that
this course serves as a mere entrée to a rich and varied
field. Suggestions for further study will come in the form
of class discussion and your own consideration of and writing
about the texts listed below and those that you will encounter
invariably over the course of pursuing your own research.
Texts for the class will include the following:
Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems,
Michael Harper
Fences, August Wilson
Venus, Suzan-Lori Parks
Love, Toni Morrison
The Middle Passage, Charles Johnson
Brothers and Keepers, John Edgar Wideman
Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone, Itabari Njeri
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