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ENG 031
Introduction to African-American Literature and Culture
Course Description: The African American experience spans four centuries, from the
initial settlement of North America by Europeans and the establishment of the transAtlantic slave trade, to the present day. This interdisciplinary course examines the social
thought, cultural mores, religious institutions, intellectual history, political challenges,
literary traditions and expressive arts of people of African descent in the Americas.
Among the focal points are the centrality of the African American experience to
important legal, historical, political, and cultural developments in the formation of the
United States, and the acts of self-making or self-fashioning that African Americans
performed in response to difficult odds and circumstances. The course surveys AfricanAmerican subjectivities and the social construction of black life from slavery to the
present from historical, sociological, political and literary perspectives. This can include,
for example, close readings of slave narratives and women’s autobiography, visual
analysis of Harlem Renaissance art production, examinations of Blacks Arts poetry and
manifestos, unpacking of African-American spirituals and jazz laments, interrogation of
the Prison Industrial Complex and its affect on African-American life, discussions on the
intersections of hip hop music and philosophy, and study of the American presidency.
Course Goals: Students who complete this course should develop advanced
problem-solving skills, close reading strategies, and the ability to comparatively
analyze, parse, contextualize and synthesize complex texts and ideas from across
disciplines.
Course Learning Objectives:
Recognize and articulate historical realities, periods and movements, master
narratives and counter-narratives, and critical debates about the experience and
literature of people of African descent in the Americas.
Identify essential political, social, legal and cultural developments impacting
African-American subjectivity as articulated through a variety of canonical and noncanonical texts across genres, including speeches, slave narratives, poetry,
spirituals, short stories, novels, plays, manifestos, music and performance.
Develop an understanding and appreciation for the relationship between people of
African descent in the Americas, and the African Diaspora and global society.
Recognize and explain the ways in which African-American literature culture is
synonymous with central to an understanding of American literature and culture.
Distinguish among primary, secondary and tertiary literature, and review and
evaluate critical reception of authors and their respective texts.
Read and Interpret texts using close reading strategies that mind historical,
cultural and temporal context, and rely on careful methods of literary and rhetorical
analysis.
Respond to interpretations of authors and texts with original, learned and
thoughtful oral and written work that surpasses mere summarization and repetition
of received ideas.
Present ideas in a cogent, productive and informed way before audiences of peers
and through breakout groups
All above CLOs are applicable to the Literature and English Major, and to the General
Education program as well.
Planned Learning Outcomes (PLOs) for the English Major
1. Interpret texts with due sensitivity to both textual and contextual cues.
2. Articulate an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of texts by the standards
of their times and places.
3. Demonstrate historical, geographic, and cultural empathy by reading texts
written in other times, places, and cultures.
4. Apply interpretive strategies developed in literary study to other academic
and professional contexts.
5. Write cogently and with sensitivity to audience.
General Education Guiding Principles this course addresses:
Communication: analyzing authors’ writing, and communicating responses
to that writing by addressing the class and instructor.
Aesthetic understanding: appreciating the unique qualities of literature,
despite or perhaps because of their difficulty compared to other types of writing.
Creativity: both appreciating the author’s creativity by reading their many
and diverse works, and responding creatively to that work through writing and/or
projects.
Appreciation of diverse perspectives in both global and community
contexts: learning about an author’s historical and geographic context, different as
it is from our own, and thinking about how their particular context shaped their
writing, while also considering how their writing in turn has effected other world
authors in myriad ways.