African & African American Literature (AAAL)
FalFall 2015 Course Offerings
ENG400, African American Rhetorics
Professor Burns
This seminar will explore rhetorics of black
Americans. We will address the history and
development of African American Vernacular
English (AAVE), its roles within black cultures,
and its relationships to black experiences in
mainstream U.S. society. The course will draw
rhetorical frameworks from Western European
and African Diasporic traditions, sociolinguistic
theory, and sociocultural theory. We will analyze
texts as expressions of black Americans’
experiences and forms of resistance to racial
oppression in the U.S. The main goals of the
course are to have students engage in rhetorical
analysis and develop a more critical
understanding of the role language has played in
the black American Experience.
LIT202, African American Literature I
Professor Pollard
This course explores the richness and complexity of the African American literary tradition from the
earliest days of slavery through the first decade of the twentieth century (1619-1919). We will
examine the vernacular roots of African American literature in slave songs and folktales; read
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and
Frederick Douglass; and study African American novels, poems, and essays. Throughout the
semester, our discussions will focus on the ways in which African Americans have used the power of
words to fight for freedom and to contribute to the development of America’s national, social, and
cultural identities.
ENG400, African & African American Photography
Professor Ulmer
How has slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, and globalization shaped
the history of African and African American photography? To what
extent do photographs comment upon or subvert racial identities and
social hierarchies? What role does the camera play in protest movements?
Is the camera the “master’s tool” and/or can it “dismantle the master’s
house”? Asking such questions will plunge us into the study of the
politics of representation in African and African American still
photography. Aesthetics, gender, class, as well as issues of memory,
identity, subjectivity, historical “truth,” race, and the African diaspora will
also be explored as we familiarize ourselves with various national and
international Black Arts movements. We will consider the production,
distribution, consumption and archiving of visual texts, and examine
various genres from the social documentary to portraiture to art
photography.
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AAAL Fall 2015 Courses, cont…
CLS203, African Studies
Professor Awuyah
We will study literary works that illustrate major
historical changes and socio-cultural traditions within
Africa. We will consider African writings as artistic
expressions manifesting the depth, value, and beauty
of African culture. Thus, students will examine the
self-representation of African experience that is
posited as alternative to the dominant Western mode
of representing black reality. Students will come to
appreciate the common threads as well as the variety
of African literature, since the selected works for this
course represent a wide array of African imaginative
writing.
The course will also show how the urgency to
respond to political imperatives has resulted in
marginalizing the aspirations of women. The focus
on Ba, Gordimer, Head, Darko, and other female
authors allows us to consider the place of the female
voice within competing discourses of the African
experience.
Lit 206, African American Literature &
Literary Theory
Professor Pollard
For more information about the
AAAL Minor at WCU:
How does literary theory—New Criticism,
deconstruction, feminism, psychoanalysis, and
more—shape the way we read and interpret
African American writing? In what ways has
“theory” both impoverished and enriched the
study of black literature and culture? In LIT
206, we will examine the relationship between
theory, meaning, and value in African
American literary and cultural contexts. We
will discuss African American poetry, fiction
(Toni Morrison’s Sula), and a graphic novel
(Johnson and Pleece’s Incognegro). We will also
explore the issue of race in popular culture by
analyzing representations of blackness in
contemporary TV and film.
Please visit our official page on the
WCU English Department website:
https://www.wcupa.edu/_academics/
sch_cas.eng/africanLit.aspx
Or contact our Program Coordinator:
Dr. Cherise Pollard
Main Hall 529
CPollard@wcupa.edu
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