AFAM 469 –
Slavery and the Literary Imagination

The impact of slavery on the petitions, poetry, slave narratives, autobiographies, and novels of African Americans.

ENGL 469 / AFAM 469 Slavery and the Literary Imagination (3) (US)(BA) This course meets the bachelor of arts degree requirements. ENGL 469 /AFAM 469 provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to examine African American petitions, poetry, slave narratives, autobiographies, and novels as literary reconstructions of the economics, politics, ethics, and poetics of slavery. Authors under consideration will vary from class to class, but may include writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Phillis Wheatley, F. Harper, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Jacobs, W. W. Brown, Harriet Wilson, Margaret Walker, Arna Bontemps, D. Bradley, S. A. Williams, Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, and Charles Johnson. The course will focus on the complex relationship of slavery to the literary imagination of Americans of African descent as they increasingly discovered the limitations and possibilities of reading and writing themselves into freedom, literacy, and wholeness as human beings and American citizens. Topics covered will vary, but will include issues of the legacy of slavery in the west; the political aims and rhetorical conventions of African American autobiography; the myths and realities of slavery; economic, political, ethical, and aesthetic issues of the representation of slavery; understandings of Black consciousness and Black culture on the road from slavery to freedom; the rise of African American realism as a response to the legacy of slavery; Black Feminism and issues of slavery; the role of history and memory in the construction of slavery; post-modern configurations of slavery; and the like. This class will prepare students for advanced courses in African American literature, as well as other academic courses that engage in the verbal and written analysis of complex written forms.