Black Literature in White America
MA—PhD joint course
3014MA03
TIME & PLACE:
INSTRUCTOR:
OFFICE HOURS:
F. 10.00-11:40 am
Institute Library reading room,
Main Building, University of Debrecen
Gabriella Varró
Office: Room #116/1, Main Bldg of the U of D
Telephone: 512-900 (ext.: 22152)
M. 14.00–15.00, Tu. 10.00–11.00, 116/1
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the significance of a specifically
African American literary tradition in shaping the identities and the histories of people of
African descent in the United States. We will begin by positioning African American
literature within an American literary history. Specifically, we will be considering how slave
narratives shaped and informed 19th-century African American expressiveness. We will
closely consider the ways verbal and literary modes, including: African retentions, oral
traditions, signifying, folklore, and music, have created a unique African American literary
voice, and have affected both African Americans’ understandings of themselves, as well as
the ways in which they have historically been understood in the American popular
imagination. The course reviews the major milestones of African American literary history
from the time of the slave narratives (here exemplified by Frederick Douglass), through the
first representative leaders and theoreticians (W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington), the
Harlem renaissance authors (Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, etc.) to the
point of the evolution of the neo-slave narrative (here represented by Nobel Prize Winner
Toni Morrison). The readings will also include those individual talents who greatly influenced
the course of African American writing and consciousness in the 20th century (Ralph Ellison,
James Baldwin, Alice Walker, etc.). In an effort to critically map the genealogies of this
tradition we will be interrogating the ways in which issues of gender, sexuality, and class
specifically inform the works.
Schedule
Week 1—Sept 16: • Introduction to class, Orientation, sign-up for presentations, course
requirements for MA and PhD students
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Week 2—Sept 23: THE GENRE OF THE SLAVE NARRATIVE
selections from:
• Frederick DOUGLASS, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Boston: Bedford Books , 1845. (163p.) [7 copies]
CRITICISM: Heglar, Charles J. “Introduction.” “The Classic Slave Narrative.” Rethinking the
Slave Narrative. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. 1-17. (available in pdf.)
Week 3—Sept 30—No class/ Make-up class has to be arranged for during the
orientation session: IMAGES OF PASSING and CONJURING
• Charles W. CHESNUTT, “The Goophered Grapewine,” "The Wife of His Youth,” "Po'
Sandy" from The Conjure Woman. Ann Arbor, MI: U of Michigan P, 1969. (1-64), and The
Wife of His Youth. Ann Harbor: U of Michigan P, 1972.
“The Wife of His Youth”
Electronic text source: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CheWife.html
“The Goophered Grapewine”
Electronic text source: http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CheGoop.html
"Po' Sandy"
Electronic text source: Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library: "Po' Sandy."
Atlantic Monthly 61 (1888): 605-611.
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/CheSand.html
CRITICISM:
Bundrick, Christopher. “’I Shall Leave the Realm of Fiction’: Conjure, Genre and Passing in
the Fiction of Charles Chesnutt.” Charles Chesnutt Reappraised: Essays on the First African
American Fiction Writer. Eds. David Garrett Izzo and Maria Orban. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 2009. 42-69. (available in pdf from illiad)
Or,
Wachtell, Cynthia. “’The Wife of His Youth’: A Trickster Tale.” Charles Chesnutt
Reappraised: Essays on the First Major African American Fiction Writer. Eds. David Garrett
Izzo,Maria Orban, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. 159-172. (Electronic source: google
books)
Week 4—Oct. 07: THE DUBOIS-WASHINGTON DEBATE
• Booker T. WASHINGTON: “The Atlanta Compromise Speech”
• W.E.B. DUBOIS, selection from The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Modern Library,
2003. [1903.] “Of our spiritual strivings,” (3-11) “Of the dawn of freedom,” (11-28) “Of Mr.
Booker T. Washington and others,” (28-40) “Of the meaning of progress,” (40-49) “Of the
sons of master and man.” (102-118)
“The Atlanta Compromise Speech”
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Electronic source: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39
“Of our spiritual strivings,”
Electronic source: http://www.bartleby.com/114/1.html
Week 5—Oct. 14: THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
• Selections from Jean TOOMER’s Cane. NY: Liveright, 1923. [14 copies]
“Karintha,” “Becky,” “Carma,” “Fern,” “Esther,” “Blood-Burning Moon,” “Seventh Street,”
“Theater,” “Bona and Paul,” “Kabnis.”
CRITICISM: Barbara F. Bowen: “The Untroubled Voice: Call and Response in Cane.” Black
Literature and Literary Theory. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. (available as pdf. From illiad)
Week 6—Oct. 21: THEORETITIANS OF THE RENAISSANCE
• Langston HUGHES: “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926)
• Alain LOCKE, “The New Negro” (1925) (available as pdf file on the net)
• Richard WRIGHT: The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch (1937)
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”
Electronic Source: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/360.html
The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch
Electronic Source: http://newdeal.feri.org/fwp/fwp03.htm
Week 7—Oct. 28: Zora Neale HURSTON: THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD.
New York: Perennial Library, 1990. (1937) (207p.) [12 copies]
CRITICISM: Barbara Johnson: “Metaphor, Metonymy and Voice in Their Eyes Were
Watching God.” American Fiction Between the Wars. Ed. Harold Bloom. N.p.: Chelsea
House, 2005. 155-173. (source: google books, full text of the essay)
Week 8 Consultation week—no classes
Week 9— Nov. 11: MIDTERM TEST
Week 10—Nov. 18:: ELLISON’S INVISIBLE MAN. New York: Vintage, 1989 (1953)
(568p.) [40 copies]
Chapters I-13 (288p.)
Selected critical readings from John M. Reilly, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of
Invisible Man; A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.
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CRITICISM: “Irony From Underground: Satiric Elements in Invisible Man.” by W. J.
Schafer. 39-47. (available as pdf. from illiad)
Week 11—Nov. 25: ELLISON’S INVISIBLE MAN. New York: Vintage, 1989 (1953)
(568p.)
Chapters 14-25 (pages 288-568)
CRITICISM: “The Symbolism of Vision.” by C. I. Glicksberg. 48-55. (available as pdf. from
illiad)
Week 12— Dec. 02: ALICE WALKER: THE COLOR PURPLE (1982)
Selections of critical readings from: Harold Bloom, ed. Bloom’s Modern Critical
Interpretations: The Color Purple. NY: Infobase, 2008.
CRITICISM: Berlant, Lauren, ”Race, Gender, and Nation in The Color Purple” Critical
Inquiry, 14:4 (1988:Summer) p.831-859. (pdf available through illiad)
Week 13—Dec. 09: THE NEO-SLAVE NARRATIVE
• Toni MORRISON: Beloved (1987)
Selected critical reading from: Barabara H. Solomon, ed. Critical essays on Toni Morrison's
Beloved. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.
CRITICISM: “Beloved: a womanist neo-slave narrative; or multivocal remembrances of
things past.” by Bernard W. Bell (article on Jstor)
Week 14—Dec. 16: My favorite black poem
Closing and grading
Method(s) of assessment: (test, in-class essay, take-home essay, presentations, other)
MA and PhD students will be assigned different tasks. Primary readings will be compulsory
for all. Critical readings (indicated as CRITICISM in the course schedule) are optional for
MA students and compulsory for PhD students. Each student will have to hand in a one-page
reader’s journal for each class containing personal reflections and questions pertaining to the
assigned reading/s. PhD students will have to elaborate on 1-2 major points raised by the
critic in their journal entries.
TAKE-HOME ESSAY:
The class contains one major written assignment, a take-home paper, whose length varies
depending on student’s qualifications. PhD students will have to write a 10-page take-home
essay on one of the primary readings incorporating at least 3 major critical reflections on the
given piece. MA students will be assigned to write an 8-page take-home essay, reflecting on
at least 2 major critical summaries/evaluations. Further guidelines for this assignment will be
specified during orientation session.
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ORAL ASSIGMENT:
Each student will be responsible for one in-class oral presentation, where an original
reading/approach to the given text should be highlighted. Students will have to get their
presentation outlines approved by the instructor at least three days before presenting. Sign-up
for the individual presentation will occur through the first week of classes.
FINAL EXAM:
The course contains an in-class major written exam at mid-term, where MA students will
mostly be tested on the primary readings, whereas tests for PhD students will contain
questions on both primary and secondary reading assignments.
Academic background of the course (list ten secondary sources that are not part of the assignments for
students, but which you have been using for designing the course):
Selected Bibliography 2000-Present
Abernathy, Jeff. To Hell and Back: Race and Betrayal in the Southern
Novel. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2003.
Allen, Carol D. Peculiar Passages: Black Women Playwrights, 1875 to
2000. NY: Peter Lang, 2005.
Baker, Houston A., Jr., and David L. Dudley. Critical Memory: Public
Spheres, African American Writing, and Black Fathers and Sons in
America. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2001.
Bell, Bernard W. The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots
and Modern Literary Branches. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2004.
Boan, Devon. The Black 'I': Author and Audience in African American
Literature. NY: Peter Lang, 2002.
Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. The Origins of African American Literature, 16801865. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2001.
Carr, Robert. Black Nationalism in the New World: Reading the AfricanAmerican and West Indian Experience. Durham: Duke UP, 2002.
Csicsila, Joseph, and Tom Quirk. Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends
and American Literature Anthologies. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2004.
Early, Gerald L. This Is Where I Came In: Black America in the 1960s.
Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003.
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English, Daylanne K. Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina
P, 2004.
Ervin, Hazel A. The Handbook of African American Literature. Gainesville:
UP of Florida, 2004.
Gates, Henry L. Jr., and Evelyn B. Higginbotham. African American Lives.
NY: oxford UP, 2004.
Green, Adam. Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago,
1940-1955. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007.
Harris, Trudier. Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African
American Literature. NY: Palgrave, 2001.
Herring, Scott. Queering the Underworld: Slumming, Literature, and the
Undoing of Lesbian and Gay History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007.
Hogue, W. Lawrence. The African American Male, Writing, and Difference:
A Polycentric Approach to African American Literature, Criticism, and
History. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003.
King, Lovalerie, and Trudier Harris-Lopez. A Student's Guide to African
American Literature, 1760 to the Present. NY: Peter Lang, 2003.
McGeachy, M. G. Lonesome Words: The Vocal Poetics of the Old English
Lament and the African-American Blues Song. NY: Palgrave Macmillan,
2006.
Pfeiffer, Kathleen. Race Passing and American Individualism. Amherst: U
of Massachusetts P, 2003.
Richards, Phillip M. Black Heart: The Moral Life of Recent African American
Letters. NY: Peter Lang, 2006.
Rottenberg, Catherine. Performing Americanness: Race, Class, and
Gender in Modern African-American and Jewish-American Literature.
Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 2008.
Samuels, Wilfred D., Woodard, Loretta, Gilchrist; Guzzio, and Tracie
Church. eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Literature. NY: Facts On
File, 2007.
Thompson, Carlyle V. Eating the Black Body: Miscegenation as Sexual
Consumption in African American Literature and Culture. NY: Peter Lang,
2006.
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Wall, Cheryl A. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and
Literary Tradition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2005.
Zabel, Darcy A. The (Underground)
Literature. NY: Peter Lang, 2004.
Railroad
in
African
American
Zackodnik, Teresa C. The Mulatta and the Politics of Race. Jackson: UP of
Mississippi, 2004.
Material requirements of the course:
Theoretical writings and criticism will be made available to students in the form of e-files
(indicated on the syllabus as ‘pdf available through illiad) to be accessed through a homepage.
Primary literature, novels, poems, essays should be checked out from the library, if not
indicated otherwise in the syllabus.
VG.