(This course is cross-listed with BL_STU 3705)

This course has three learning objectives:

1. To analyze the ways reading and critical thinking about culture, identity, and the history of people of African descent, has framed what we understand as “reading Black.” This course will expose students to the importance of cultural expression through reading Black literature and the ways which Black people read and appreciate their own literary works—from critical “black” perspectives.
2. To explore such issues in American literature as illiterate “readers,” communal vs. individual black reading, the myth of “authentic” and monolithic blackness, and the location of nineteenth-century black literature outside of bound books—through secondary readings, writing, class discussions, and oral presentations.
3. To expose students to contemporary literary criticism and literary theories based in African Diaspora aesthetics and frameworks for cultural analysis. Secondary readings build competency in evaluating primary and secondary source materials and provide knowledge about diverse disciplinary methods for studying historical, cultural, and sociological phenomena in African American literature.

Textbook list

Blackboard Course Packet: BLSTU 3705 Reading Black: African American Literary Theory and Criticism

Collins, Patricia Hill Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism

Gibaldi, Joseph MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein, "They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing

McHenry, Elizabeth Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

Morrison, Toni Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary

Napier, Winston, African American Literary Theory: A Reader

Pearlman, Daniel and Paula R, Guide to Rapid Revision

Recommended Texts:

Gates, Henry Louis Jr.  Signifying Monkey

Stephen Henderson. Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic

Langley, April. The Black Aesthetic Unbound

Zafar, Rafia.  We Wear the Mask:  African Amer