New Negro Arts and Politics:
The Harlem Renaissance Reconsidered
AFAM S309 / HIST S186
Day and Time: Monday and Wednesday: 1:00pm – 4:15pm
Classroom: 81 Wall Street, room 201
Instructor: Laurie Woodard
Office Hours: by appointment
Office: TBA
Email: lwoodard11@gmail.com
COURSE OVERVIEW
Throughout the Twentieth Century, African Americans have employed a variety of strategies
toward the attainment of social, political, and economic equality. At different historical
moments, specific agenda, tactics, and participants have come to forefront, yet the overall
objectives remain the same. During the 1920s and1930s, many African Americans put forth a
fusion of cultural and political activism as the vanguard of the movement. New Negro Arts and
Politics: The Harlem Renaissance Reconsidered will look beyond traditional literary models and
present students with a deeper and more complete understanding of the complex and dynamic
social, cultural, and political phenomenon known as the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance. We
will explore the intersection between culture and politics during a specific moment in African
American history and examine its place within the larger struggle for equality. The key themes
the course will address are Agency, Resistance, Self-determination, Citizenship, Political
Activism, Gender, Sexuality, Color, Tactics, and Civil Rights. Required readings will include
both primary sources and secondary literature and will introduce students to a variety of sources
as well as the academic discourse focused upon the Harlem Renaissance.
REQUIREMENTS
Students are required to complete weekly reading, audio, and visual assignments and be prepared
to discuss them during seminar meetings. To facilitate discussion, students will submit three
questions to the class chat room (via classes V2) by 8:00pm each Sunday and Tuesday. Students
must also complete a 4-page close reading of one of the assigned texts, and a final 12-page essay
on a topic of their own choosing.
Attendance, discussion questions, and participation in weekly seminars
Close essay
Final essay
25%
25%
50%
COURSE MATERIALS
On-line Resources (OLR)
Cullen, Countee, “Yet Do I Marvel”[classes v2]
Du Bois, W.E.B., Souls of Black Folk [Black Thought and Culture (BTC)]
Du Bois, W.E.B., “Criteria of Negro Art,” “Close Ranks,” and “Returning Soldiers” [v2]
Harrison, Hubert, “Homo Africanus Harlemi” [v2]
Hughes, Langston, “Limitations of Life” [Orbis],
Hughes, Langston, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” [BTC]
Hughes, Langston, “Harlem,” and “Motto” [v2]
Locke, Alain, selections from The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance [V2]
McKay, Claude, “If We Must Die” [v2]
Robeson, Paul, “The Negro Artist Looks Ahead” [v2]
Schuyler, George, “The Negro-Art Hokum” [BTC]
Washington, Booker T., “Atlanta Cotton Expo Address” [BTC: Up From Slavery, ch. XIV]
Books (Yale Book Store)
Fauset, Jessie, Plum Bun
Hughes, Langston, The Ways of White Folks
McKay, Claude, Home to Harlem
Van Vechten, Carl, Nigger Heaven
Five films – The Birth of a Nation (part 2), I’ll Make Me a World: Lift Every Voice, I’ll Make Me
a World: Without Fear or Shame, Imitation of Life (1934), and Paul Robeson: Here I Stand will
be shown during the semester.
SYLLABUS
WEEK I: Introduction - Arts, Politics, and the Roots of the New Negro Movement
5 July 2010
Audio/Visual: The Birth of a Nation, part 2
7 July 2010
“Atlanta Cotton Expo Address” [OLR]
WEEK II: Urbanization and African American Culture
12 July 2010
Souls of Black Folk [OLR]
Audio/Visual: I’ll Make Me a World: Lift Every Voice
14 July 2010
“Criteria of Negro Art” [OLR]
“Close Ranks,” “Returning Soldiers,” “If We Must Die” [CP]
WEEK III: Enter the New New Negroes
19 July 2010
The New Negro [OLR]
“Harlem” [CP]
“Motto” [CP]
2
“Yet Do I Marvel” [CP]
Audio/Visual: I’ll Make Me a World: Without Fear or Shame
Assignment: 4-page Close reading
*MIDTERM (There are no exams; this is just a reminder of where we are in the term.)
21 July 2010
Home to Harlem
**POSSIBLE FIELD TRIP
WEEK IV: The Ways and Words and White Folks
26 July 2010
Nigger Heaven
“Homo Africanus Harlemi” [CP]
28 July 2010
The Ways of White Folks
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” [OLR]
“The Negro-Art Hokum” [OLR]
WEEK V: Race-Gender-Color
2 August 2010
Plum Bun
“Limitations of Life” [OLR]
Audio/visual: Imitation of Life (1934)
4 August 2010
“The Negro Artist Looks Ahead” [CP]
Audio/visual: Paul Robeson: Here I Stand
Wrap Up
**FINAL PAPERS DUE
Supplemental Reading
(The selections listed below are not required but will provide students with additional insight and
may be useful for the final essay.)
3
Anderson, Jervis, This Was Harlem and A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait
Cripps, Thomas, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Films, 1900-1942
Denning, Michael, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth
Century
Griffin, Farah Jasmine, If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday
Hartman, Saidiya, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century
America
Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea
Marable, Manning and Leith Mullings, eds., Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance,
Reform, and Renewal, An African American Anthology
Mumford, Kevin, Interzones: Black and White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the
Early Twentieth Century
Powell, Richard J., Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century
O’Meally, Robert, History and Memory in African American Culture
Osofsky, Gilbert, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto
Roach, Joseph, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance
Rose, Phyllis, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time
Tyler, Bruce, From Harlem to Hollywood: The Struggle for Racial and Cultural Democracy,
1920-1943
Von Eschen, Penny, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957
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