African American Literature

African American literary studies designates both a distinct field of specialization within the English department and a necessarily dynamic area of interdisciplinary inquiry, the parameters of which are continually evolving. While retaining its longstanding support for African American studies methodologies, including through faculty with joint appointments in the African American World Studies program, the department also encourages approaches to African American literature that situate it in other frameworks. Examples of these approaches include not only institutionalized sites such as American Studies and Women's studies but also looser affiliations of faculty working in the often-intersecting domains of cultural, diaspora, postcolonial, border, new world, and globalization studies.

Recent and/or Upcoming Courses

8:074 Selected American Authors: James Baldwin and Toni Morrison; Langston Hughes and Alice Walker; Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler; Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston

8:098 Poetry and Memoirs by British and American Writers of African Descent

8:106 Literature and Culture of 20th Century America: From Harlem to Black Power

8:114 American Regional Literatures: The Black Atlantic

8:137 African American Autobiography

8:139 African-American Poetry

8:163 Identity and Social Issues: Harlem Renaissance

8:188 Prose by Women Writers: Contemporary African America Women Novelists

8:228 Studies in African American Literature: Introductory Survey; Black Arts Movement and Its Post-1960s Discontents; Comic Visions; The Black Atlantic; The Harlem Renaissance and Latin America

8:450 Seminar in American Literature: Race and Racism in Popular Texts