(Cross-listed BL_STU 3410)

Introduction to Africana Literature is an undergraduate course that will introduce students to 20th and 21st Centuries Africana Literature & Theory, beginning with the W.E.B. Dubois/Booker T. Washington Debate, followed by the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. Poets highlighted for that era include James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes & Countee Cullen. The searing 60s & 70s marks another major period, the Black Arts Movement as the sister to the Civil Rights Movement, with major poets i.e. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti) & Nikki Giovani. Other figures representing other genres include Maulana Karenge--7 Principles & Kwanzaa; Molefi Asante— Afrocentricity; Black female-based theories—Alice Walker--Womanism; Barbara Smith & bell hooks--Black Feminism & Clenora Hudson (Weems)—Africana Womanism. A 21stcentury-novel, Angie Thomas’TheHateUGive, will be the class’ last literary work. ENJOY!