(Cross-listed with FRENCH 8087 and BL_STU 8901)

This new, interdisciplinary course will explore a broad range of works by black writers of French, English, Spanish, Portuguese and German expression as well as correlative critical materials. Primary writers and texts include, but are not limited to: Juan Francisco Manzano, The Autobiography of a Slave; Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; Miguel Barnet, Biography of a Runaway Slave; George Lamming, In the Castle of my Skin; Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy; Quince Duncan, Weathered Men; The Four Mirrors; Claude McKay, Banjo; Maryse Condé, Crossing the Mangrove; Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Dancing on the Volcano; Joseph Zobel, Black Shack Alley; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; The Wretched of the Earth; Edouard Glissant, The Fourth Century; Patrick Chamoiseau, Solibo Magnificent; Machado de Assis, The Alienist and Other Stories of Nineteenth-Century Brazil; Dom Casmurro; Lima Barreto, The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma; Manuel Zapata Olivella, Chambacu: Black Slum; Adalberto Ortiz, Juyungo; Nelson Estupiñán Bass, When the Guayacans Were in Bloom; C. L. R. James, Minty Alley; Theodor Michael, Black German: An Afro-German Life in the Twentieth Century. 

Course participants will engage in interdisciplinary collaborative class discussion and will prepare an oral presentation as well as a significant final project suitable for possible publication.  All readings, discussions and assignments in English.