ENG 154: Black Poetry
Instructor: Marc Barnhill
Section: D01W (17228)
Modality: In-Person
Meetings: Mon & Wed 12pm-1:15pm
- Fully in-person (no online sessions)
- Frequent reflective writing
- Several formal essays and one culminating (research-based) project
- Emphasis on discussion and on text-based reading and writing activities
- No books to purchase (all texts provided electronically)
DESCRIPTION
Elizabeth Alexander once asked, “What is ‘Black” about Black poetry?” Gwendolyn Brooks wondered, “Are there ways, is there ANY way, to make English words speak blackly?” And Dudley Randall said that Black poets have “tried to change language, to turn it around, to give new meanings and connotations to words.” How did this multigenerational literary project emerge from the experience of slavery and emancipation, blossom during the Harlem Renaissance, challenge the status quo during the Civil Rights and Black Arts eras, and continue to evolve up to the present day? How do Black poets speak to and about one another across generations? What common themes, symbols, approaches, and uses of language make up this body of work? How do Black poets draw on the cultural call-and-response of African American history, and how do they revisit and “remix” what has gone before in creating new styles and statements? What “clues” about American culture and history in general (and about African American culture and history in particular) can be found in this body of literature? What do they reveal about the larger picture of which these works are a part?
In our class, we will focus on the appreciation, interpretation, and understanding of poetry created by Black American authors, and on the exploration of this body of work through expository analytical writing. We will learn about the various historical periods, political and aesthetic movements, and major figures and works associated with this literary tradition, along with the various forms, styles, themes, and purposes it has had in changing cultural contexts and circumstances. Along the way, we will gain insight into how the signs and signifiers of Black life and art — slavery and freedom, democracy and oppression, ancestry and activism, martyrdom and music, power and justice — formed and inform the complex racial landscape we inhabit today.