Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Major topics include abolition, labor and conditions under slave bondage, reconstructing the black identity in the post-Emancipation Era and the Harlem Renaissance, protest against racist violence, racial passing and socioeconomic mobility, creation of a Black aesthetic.

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Recognize the importance of self-documentation as a means to claim the African-American identity.
2. Examine the intersection of economics, history, culture, region, politics, religion, gender, and sexuality to African-American literature.
3. Understand the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the African-American experience.
4. Identify the relationship between African-American literary forms and Black vernacular (gospel, blues, jazz, sermons, stories, and the oral tradition).

1. Relate the writings of the African-Americans from the time of slavery through the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary African American writing.

2. Identify the shared experiences in the writing of the time period to the contemporary Black experience.

3. Investigate the institutional and cultural forces that seek to erase African-American Literature.

Students read, discuss, write and perform research on related topics and events presented in the literature. Class activities may include instructor lecture, whole class discussion, small group work, student presentations and guest lectures.

Students will complete a term project, typically a research paper of 1500-2000 words in length, pertinent to the literature of the period.  Instructors may also permit alternatives to the traditional research paper.  Such alternatives include the following possibilities: scrapbook/family history projects; websites; PowerPoint presentations; multimedia presentations; portfolios of creative writing or visual art forms; dance, theatrical or spoken word performances.  Instructors who permit such alternatives will ensure that students also write substantive analytical pieces in the form of journal, examination, or other appropriate format.  Additionally, instructors may use a variety of other assessment tools such as quizzes, participation, etc.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Some of the central concepts of the course include:

Creation of African American writing as a body of literature and the major and minor figures of the time period.

Self-documentation and fictional self-documentation as self-representation, resistance against Eurocentric ideas of Blackness, a form of preservation of Black culture.

The influence of the slave narrative and the neo slave narrative in American history and its mass appeal to American audiences.

The Harlem Renaissance as a purposefully created literary movement including the founders, participants, publications, politics, and history.

The importance of counter public spaces for the formation and preservation of African American identity, resistance, and culture.

The unique aesthetics of African American Literature such as dialect, jazz poetry, gospel, blues, and the sermon.

Suggested Texts and Writers:

Anthologies  

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2014). Ed. Henry Louise Gates.

The Wiley-Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature (2014).  Ed. Gene Andrew Jarrett.

The Harlem Renaissance: A Brief History with Documents (2007). Ed. Jeffrey B. Ferguson

The Classic Slave Narratives (2012). Ed. Henry Louise Gates.

Suggested Writers

William Wells Brown

Frederick Douglass

Olaudah Equiano

Harriet Jacobs

Elizabeth Keckley

Frances Harper

Jupiter Hammond

Martin R. Delaney

Solomon Northup

David Walker

Phillis Wheatley

Harriet Wilson

*

Charlotte Grimke

Booker T. Washington

Charles Chesnutt

Pauline Hopkins

Ida B. Wells

W.E.B Du Bois

James Weldon Johnson

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Alice Dunbar Nelson

William Braithwaite

Fenton Johnson

*

Angelina Weld Grimke

Anne Spencer

Alain Locke

Georgia Douglass Johnson

Marcus Garvey

Claude McKay

Zora Neale Hurston

Nella Larsen

Jean Toomer

George Schulyer

Rudolph Fisher

Marita Bonner

Sterling Brown

Gwendolyn Bennet

Wallace Thurman

Langston Hughes

Countee Cullen

Helene Johnson