First Year Seminar 118 - African American Creative Masterpieces

This seminar introduces students to the art of cultural criticism and to the study of African American expressive culture. Deploying a broad, interdisciplinary approach, we survey influential works of twentieth/twenty-first century African American fiction, music, drama, painting, and photography in order to understand the tendencies and trends associated with what scholars sometimes refer to as “the black aesthetic.” We pay particular attention to “masterpiece” works—i.e. extraordinary works of art that have been widely acknowledged as watershed, influential, and enduring. What makes a (black) work of art a “masterpiece”? How have African Americans historically turned to the arts and expressive culture as sites of sociopolitical critique? What role have artists played in building and sustaining what the poet Fred Moten refers to as “the black radical tradition” (i.e. a tradition of black resistance, rebellion, and creative worldmaking)? Some of the “masterpieces” that we will explore this semester will include Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, and Nina Simone’s Greatest Hits, among others.

Fall semester. Professor Roberts.

How to handle overenrollment: Dean will handle this.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: critical writing, close reading, Socratic dialogue, and interdisciplinary analysis; students will produce short, weekly critical-reflection journals as well as write a longer midterm and final paper, and participate in a collaborative in-class group presentation.