English 371 - African American Literature

This course will ask how African American writers sustain and manipulate a culturally specific literary tradition at various historical moments, ranging from the Colonial period to the post-Civil Rights era.

CW Gen Ed Topic: The Idea of Friendship

The nature of friendship has been an enduring subject of discourse in American literature. Selections from Phillis Wheatley's eighteenth-century poetry explore the virtues derived from friendships between Greco-Roman mythological characters and readers while later works such as Mark Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson (1893) typify the common trials and victories that compel characters to form affirming bonds. Connotations associated with "friendship" usually evoke the circumstances that usher specific people into amicable relationships, but the word also serves as a metaphor for the circumstances that beget relationships between communities, institutions and geographical regions. A critical approach to "friendship" gestures to the terms that order the spirit of an accord held between factions, the durability of peaceful relations and/or the conflicts that test oaths and vows. Our project is to interpret the layered meanings of friendship discourse apparent in eighteenth century to early twentieth-century American poetry and fiction. We will interrogate different types of friendly relations including friendships that move an individual from one socio-economic class into another, friendships that arise from shared values, friendships that provide models for social change and friendships that meet with disastrous ends. Students will study literature by African American authors and literature with African American characters. Readings include works by the authors Phillis Wheatley, Venture Smith, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett.