Course details

Name: ENGL - 601

Title: SEMINAR IN AMERICAN LITERATURE: AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY AND POETICS

Section: 01

Semester: Spring - 2012

Credits: 3

Description:
SEMINAR TOPIC: AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY AND POETICS
Surfacing in gospel, the plantation song, the dozens, the blues, jazz, and hip-hop, poetry is an integral element in African American culture. In this graduate seminar, we will examine the poetics of African American verse, focusing on its linguistic schemes, its dialogue with music, and its rhetoric. The course covers a broad spectrum of African American poets from the 18th century to the present, asking how they engage broader traditions in American letters as well as those of black expression. We will compare poets rendering experiences of slavery from both historical and contemporary perspectives, study poets who play with language and dialect to create aesthetic arguments, and explore the influence of the blues and hip-hop forms in contemporary black verse. We will pose the questions: What formal innovations and complications lie at the crossroads of poetry and musical performance? How do African American writers engage language in ways that go beyond the page, and what are the politics of writing in dialect and vernacular? In what ways and at whose expense are arguments for a black literary tradition made? Students will be expected to lead class discussions, create an annotated bibliography, and write a graduate seminar paper on an original topic.

Last updated on 2011-11-01 By Somers-Willett Susan (somerswilles)

Schedule: Tuesday From 5:30 pm To 8:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

Teaching Faculty: Somers-Willett Susan (somerswilles)

Is course canceled: No