Afro-American Studies 252 - Afro-Amer Img American Writing

Examination of a representative sampling of poetry, prose and/or drama by American writers -- black and white, male and female -- depicting African-American characters and issues related directly to the lives of African Americans. Texts chosen from the works of such authors as Jefferson, Poe, Stowe, Melville, Douglass, Delany, Dunbar, Eliot, Faulkner, Hurston, Wright, Baldwin, Styron, Baraka, and Morrison. We will analyze and interpret material in light of issues of race, gender, class, politics, historical time frame, and artistic aesthetic, in order to characterize the depictions of African-Americans in the works, and to understand what those depictions reflect about individual writers, about segments of American society, and about American society as a whole.