ASRC 4403

ASRC 4403

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

Anna Julia Cooper's pioneering publication of A Voice from the South (1892) underscores the centrality of black women in determining the possibilities for black racial uplift in the nation. Areas from local color and regionalism, to contemporary fields such as cultural geography, have underscored the impact of geography on identity. Such insights have increasingly underscored that region matters in shaping black women's identities in the U.S., along with their various cultural productions. Black women writers in the U.S. South played a salient role in shaping the black women's literature renaissance of the 1970s in both writing and theorizing literature, and thus, in expanding the conventional canons in African American and American literature more broadly. This course considers the new generation of writers of black women that has emerged in the U.S. South in more recent years in the twenty first century, whose writings have increasingly impacted the development of contemporary African American literature. This course is designed to meet this body of material with serious reading, study and critical analysis. Genres that we will explore include the novel, poetry, the essay and the memoir, along with visual art. We will consider a range of newer authors, including Edwidge Danticat, Honorée Jeffers, Tayari Jones, Valdez Perkins, Natasha Tretheway, Jesmyn Ward, and Shay Youngblood. Concomitantly, we will explore the visual art of Kara Walker. We will consider ways in which these writers build upon established themes and conventions in African American and black women's writing and the implications of their work for black feminist theory. Furthermore, we will examine the impact of their work within the emergent field of twenty first century African American literature and criticism.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

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Syllabi: none
  • 16933 ASRC 4403   SEM 101

    • R Online Meeting
    • Feb 8 - May 14, 2021
    • Richardson, R

  • Instruction Mode: Online