Course details
Name: ENLT - 602
Title: SEMINAR IN INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE: THE BLACK ATLANTIC
Section: 01
Semester: Fall - 2019
Credits: 3
Description:
This is a graduate seminar.
Inspired by Paul Gilroy's THE BLACK ATLANTIC, this course moves away from a tendency to organize a syllabus around a "national literature" and seeks, instead, another organizing principle. "The Black Atlantic" imagines a transnational literature informed by the Middle Passage, by the reinvention of oral traditions and by forms of popular resistance (both subtle and overt).
Our course will explore, for example, the ways in which West African belief systems (Yoruba, Bantu) find new expression in the Americas. The novels/poetry of Paule Marshall, Jesmyn Ward, Toni Morrison, Patrick Chamoiseau, Ben Okri and Derek Walcott include representations of healing practices and invocations of the orishas. Students will be introduced to the Afro-Brazilian practices of capoeira and candomblé in order to explore powerful relationships between orature, movement and music; we'll even participate in a capoeira workshop run by a local "mestre" (capoeira is a martial art that incorporates percussion and call-and-response singing).
Students in the seminar will be asked to participate in a shared on-line journal, do an in-class presentation and lead discussion, and produce a research paper.
Schedule: Wednesday From 5:30 pm To 8:00 pm
Graduation requirements:
- Any Literature (1e)
- International Issues (3a)
- Women and Gender Studies (3c)
- Graduate (BA/MA)
Teaching Faculty: Lorenz Johnny (lorenzj)
Is course canceled: No