ENGL 364-01, Topics in African American Literature: "The Lover's War", Fall 2010

Abstract

Over the course of this semester, we will read a range of works that deal with the themes of protest, resistance, and struggle at the heart of the African American literary tradition. We will read selections from Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Ann Petry, John A. Williams and other African American writers from the mid-twentieth century. In an effort to identify “a poetics of protest,” we will begin with the question, “ What is protest literature?” We will develop our aesthetic by considering questions like: “How can artistic productions engage in social action? How do we make distinctions between art that grows out of or participates in acts of protest and works that look back on and remember acts of resistance? What types of figurative language, rhetoric, imagery, characterizations, and narrative strategies are characteristic of protest literature in the African American tradition?” Along the way, we will consider how changes in the social climate and political landscape, as well as literary fashion compel the evolution of form and the limits of protest during the 20th century.