English 255 - Writing the Black Self

This course explores the idea of "the self" and "the subject" by reading autobiographical and memoir writing by Black authors. Through an engagement with some criticism on the role of slavery in staffing the sense of self-possession accorded to the individual subject, we will think together about how autobiographical forms of writing function in the tradition of black thought and letters. From slave narratives, to the essays of the Harlem Renaissance, to the preponderance of Black Power-era memoirs, we will consider whether these texts accomplish a Black self in writing, and if indeed that is their ambition.