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Course Abbreviation: ENGL
Course Number: 661
Full Course Title: Advanced Survey in
African American Literature
Abbreviated Course Title (24
characters max.): Survey Af-Am
literature
Catalog Credit Format : :
Course Level: GF(500-600) X
GA(700+) ____
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be offered: Fall 2006
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Catalog Description (35 words or less)
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copy of the syllabus for new courses:
Intensive study of a period in AfricanAmerican literature between 1800 and
the present, with focus to be determined
by the instructor. A number of genres
will be considered, among them
autobiography, fiction, drama, poetry,
and essays, as well as oral artifacts such
as slave songs, spirituals, and hip-hop.
May be repeated for credit with the
permission of the department.
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Credit hours: 3 hrs.
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ENGL 661 001
Spring 2005
R 7:20-10
West 256
Dr. Scott Trafton
Robinson A414
(703) 993-2782
strafton@gmu.edu
Nineteenth-Century African American Literature
The nineteenth century was for African American writers a century of “firsts”: the first black short story, the first
black novel, the first black revolutionary manifesto. Yet it was also a century structured by a highly developed
sense of some much longer traditions: musical, spiritual, political, autobiographical. In this course our task will be
to treat this crucial century in all of its specific contexts, and yet place it in relation to larger ones of black history,
black aesthetics, and American race relations. In other words, this course will provide access to some of the most
significant and influential texts and issues associated with the literary traditions of African Americans during the
nineteenth century. In particular, special attention will be given to issues of diversity within nineteenth-century
African American writing: readings will be by both men and women, enslaved and free, northern and southern,
radical and conservative, and will feature poems, short stories, novellas, novels, and that most famous combination
of autobiography, political tract, and novelistic form, the slave narrative.
The requirements for this course are in a sense very simple: a committed engagement with the materials presented
on the syllabus. In another sense, though, this simplicity is misleading: we will be covering a great deal of material
throughout this course, and your primary task will be to keep up with it. What this means is that the primary
requirements for this course are regular attendance and thorough preparation. In practical terms, the requirements
for this course are 1) two major papers, due roughly at midterm and at endterm, one 12 pages in length and one
fifteen pages in length; 2) advance proposals for each of those papers, 3) class attendance and class discussion, 4)
classroom presentations on outside readings, numbering one per student, and 5) a weekly reading journal, kept by
each student on each week’s readings, and handed in each week at the beginning of class.
Details regarding the two major written assignments will be made clear as the semester progresses. This said, the
topics of the major written assignments will be left up to each student, though as this is a literature course, students
will be expected to produce writing adhering to the conventions of graduate-level literary scholarship and
conforming to the guidelines laid out in the current edition of the MLA Handbook. Moreover, in addition to the
readings listed on the syllabus, secondary source readings will be a regular part of class discussion; outside materials
will be placed on reserve throughout the semester, and specific students will be assigned specific articles on specific
days, and will be responsible for presenting their contents to the rest of the class on those days. These reserve
readings will also be required for the major written assignments, to provide additional incentives for students’
accountability of them.
A number of additional materials will be made available throughout the semester, either in handout or for sale at the
Johnson Center, Room 117. Please note that students are responsible for all materials covered. This syllabus is
subject to change.
Texts available at the Johnson Center Bookstore
William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter
Anna Julia Cooper, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted
Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood; or, The Hidden Hand (included in The Magazine Novels of Pauline Elizabeth
Hopkins)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Adah Isaacs Menken, Infelicia and Other Writings
Joan R. Sherman, African American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century
David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
SYLLABUS
WEEK ONE
Selected spirituals played in class:
“Wade in the Water,” Fisk Jubilee Singers
“Wade in the Water,” Howard University Chamber Choir
“Wade in the Water,” Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir
“Take Me to the River,” Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir
“Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” Bernice Johnson Reagon
“Lay Down Body,” McIntosh County Shouters
WEEK TWO
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard, Hidden in Plain View, Introduction, Chapter Three, Chapter Six
(from handout)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy, Chapter One (purchased for class)
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, Chapter XIX (purchased for class)
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask” (from handout)
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter One, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (purchased for
class)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Lawrence Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness: An Exploration in Neglected Sources,” from
Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds., African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in
History and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1996) (on reserve)
Sterling Stuckey, “Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery,” from Going Through the
Storm: The Influence of African American Art in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
(on reserve)
WEEK THREE
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Peter Hinks, “Introduction,” in David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Peter
Hinks (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) (purchased for class)
Sterling Stuckey, “David Walker: In Defense of African Rights and Liberty,” from Slave Culture:
Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)
(on reserve)
WEEK FOUR
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Henry Highland Garnet, “Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” (from handout)
Robert Alexander Young, “The Ethiopian Manifesto” (from handout)
Victor Séjour, “The Mulatto” (from handout)
Frederick Douglass, The Heroic Slave (from handout)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Sterling Stuckey, “Henry Highland Garnet: Nationalism, Class Analysis, and Revolution,” in Slave
Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987) (on reserve)
Richard Yarborough, “Race, Violence, and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass’s ‘The
Heroic Slave,’” in Eric J. Sundquist, ed., Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, pp.
166-188 (on reserve at the Johnson Center, listed under Sundquist)
WEEK FIVE
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, Chapters I-XIII (pp. 27-115)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
William L. Andrews, “Introduction to the 1987 Edition,” in Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My
Freedom, ed. William L. Andrews (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. xi-xxviii
(purchased for class)
Eric J. Sundquist, “Introduction,” in Eric J. Sundquist, ed., Frederick Douglass: New Literary and
Historical Essays, pp. 1-22 (on reserve at the Johnson Center, listed under Sundquist)
WEEK SIX
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, Chapters XIV-XXV (pp. 116-248)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Wilson J. Moses, “Writing Freely? Frederick Douglass and the Constraints of Racialized Writing,” in
Eric J. Sundquist, ed., Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, pp. 66-83 (on reserve
at the Johnson Center, listed under Sundquist)
Jenny Franchot, “The Punishment of Esther: Frederick Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine,”
in Eric J. Sundquist, ed., Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, pp. 141-165 (on
reserve at the Johnson Center, listed under Sundquist)
Paper One Proposals Due
WEEK SEVEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Robert Levine, “Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background,” in Brown, Clotel, ed. Robert Levine
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000), pp. 3-27
Ann duCille, “Where in the World Is William Wells Brown? Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the
DNA of African-American Literary History,” American Literary History 12.3 (2000): 443-462, online
at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v012/12.3ducille.html
Lee Schweninger, “Clotel and the Historicity of the Anecdote,” MELUS Spring, 1999, online at
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2278/1_24/58411662/p1/article.jhtml
WEEK EIGHT
Spring Break
WEEK NINE
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Adah Isaacs Menken, Infelicia and Other Writings:
“My Heritage” (pp. 48-50)
“Judith” (pp. 50-52)
“In Vain” (pp. 57-59)
“Myself” (68-70)
“Sale of Souls” (pp. 74-77)
“Hemlock in the Furrows” (pp. 88-91)
“Hear, O Israel!” (pp. 92-95)
“Pro Patria” (pp. 97-102)
“The Autograph on the Soul” (pp. 107-110)
“Sinai” (pp. 127-128)
“Moses” (pp. 129-130)
“Oppression of the Jews, Under the Turkish
Empire” (pp. 130-132)
Joan R. Sherman, African American Poetry of the Nineteenth Century:
George Moses Horton:
Joshua McCarter Simpson:
“The Slave’s Complaint” (p. 22)
“Away to Canada” (pp. 57-60)
“Liberty and Slavery” (pp. 25-6)
“No, Master, Never!” (pp. 67-68)
“On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to James Monroe Whitfield:
Purchase the Poet’s Freedom” (pp. 27-8)
“How Long” (pp. 72-80)
“Troubled with the Itch and Rubbing with
Alfred Gibbs Campbell:
Sulfur” (p. 32)
“Song of the Decanter” (p. 105)
“Acrostics” (p. 33)
Elymas Payson Rogers:
“Imploring to Be Resigned at Death” (p. 36)
From “A Poem on the Fugitive Slave Law”
Charles Lewis Reason:
(pp. 167-173)
From “Freedom” (pp. 45-9)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Gregory Eiselein, “Introduction,” in Adah Isaacs Menken, Infelicia and Other Writings, ed. Gregory
Eiselein (Peterborough: Broadview, 2002) (purchased for class)
Joan R. Sherman, editorial inclusions for each poet read as primary source reading, in African American
Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology, ed. Joan R. Sherman (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1992) (purchased for class)
Paper One Due
WEEK TEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Jean Fagan Yellin, “Introduction” and “Appendices,” in Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. xv-xli and pp. 231-274
(purchased for class)
G. Gabrielle Foreman, “Manifest in Signs: The Politics of Sex and Representation in Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl,” in Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, eds., Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the
Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 76-99
(on reserve)
John Ernest, “Motherhood Beyond the Gate: Jacobs’s Epistemic Challenge in Incidents in the Life of a
Slave Girl,” in Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, eds., Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of
a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1196), pp. 179-198 (on
reserve)
WEEK ELEVEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Hazel V. Carby, “‘Of Lasting Service for the Race’: The Work of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,” in
Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988) (on reserve)
Claudia Tate, “Allegories of Gender and Class as Discourses of Political Desire,” in Domestic Allegories
Of Political Desire: The Black Heroine’s Text at the Turn of the Century (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992) (on reserve)
WEEK TWELVE
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Anna Julia Cooper, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper:
A Voice from the South:
“Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” (pp. 53-71)
“The Higher Education of Women” (pp. 72-87)
“‘Women versus the Indian’” (pp. 88-108)
“The Status of Woman in America” (pp. 109-117)
“Has America a Race Problem?” (pp. 121-133)
“The Negro as Presented in American Literature” (pp. 134-160)
“What Are We Worth?” (pp. 161-187)
“The Gain from a Belief” (pp. 188-196)
“The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women in the United States since the Emancipation
Proclamation” (pp. 201-205)
“The Ethics of the Negro Question” (pp. 206-215)
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Charles Lemert, “Anna Julia Cooper: The Colored Woman’s Office,” in Charles Lemert, ed., The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper
(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), pp. 1-43 (purchased for class)
Elizabeth Alexander, “‘We Must Be About Our Father’s Business’: Anna Julia Cooper and the In-Corporation of the Nineteenth
Century African-American Woman Intellectual,” in Sherry Lee Linkon, ed., In Her Own Voice: Nineteenth-Century American
Women Essayists (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 61-80 (on reserve at the Johnson Center listed under Linkon)
WEEK THIRTEEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Of One Blood; or, The Hidden Hand
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Cynthia Schrager, “Pauline Hopkins and William James: The New Psychology and the Politics of Race,” in John C. Gruesser,
ed., The Unruly Voice: Rediscovering Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996) (on reserve)
Susan Gillman, “Pauline Hopkins and the Occult: African American Revisions of Nineteenth-Century Sciences,” American
Literary History 8:1 (1996) (on reserve)
WEEK FOURTEEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Louis R. Harlan, from Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee
Maurice O. Wallace, from Constructing the Black Masculine
Final Paper Proposals Due
WEEK FIFTEEN
PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
SECONDARY SOURCE READINGS
Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness,” American Literature 64:2 (June 1992), reprinted
in The Souls of Black Folk Norton Critical Edition, ed. Gates and Oliver (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 236-244 (purchased
for class)
Arnold Rampersad, “Slavery and the Literary Imagination: Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk,” in Arnold Rampersad and
Deborah McDowell, eds., Slavery and the Literary Imagination (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), reprinted in
The Souls of Black Folk Norton Critical Edition, ed. Gates and Oliver (New York: Norton, 1999), pp. 295-311 (purchased for
class)
FINAL PAPER DUE: THURSDAY, MAY 6, 10 PM