AML 3271.1188 African American Literature
Survey 2 (1940 - present)
Summer A 2001 / MTWRF Per 2 (9:30 - 10:45 a.m.) / TUR 1315
| Nick Melczarek, instructor
| Department phone: 392-6650 |
| Office: Rolfs 5th floor
| e-mail nickym@melczarek.net
(send no attachments!) |
| Office hours: T&R Per 3
| Office phone: |
Course listserve: summer-1188-l@lists.ufl.edu
"The Imagination that produces work which bears and invites
rereadings, which motions to future readings as well as contemporary
ones, implies a shareable world and an endlessly flexible language."
-- Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark (xii)
"Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even
though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of
desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation)
that possesses revolutionary force."
-- Michel Foucault, Preface to Deleuze & Guattari
Anti-Oedipus (xiii-xiv)
Contents
(click to jump to the following sections)
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»»Course Purpose & Overview
AML 3271.1188 surveys short fiction, novels (some excerpts),
drama, essays, and speeches by African American writers from the 1940s
to the present. Our fiction readings are framed by historical background
material, as well as contemporary theoretical discussion. While
attending how African American literature intersected and participated
in such (traditional) literary movements as realism, Naturalism, and
Modernism (and the emerging fields of Postmodernism and
Postcoloniality), we'll also investigate the developing process of
self-identification for black Americans (born in the U.S.) and foreign
blacks within the U.S. as reflected in their literatures.
In our readings, lectures, and course discussions (in class and on
listserve) we'll investigate how a few primary tropes (the black
intellectual, black self-identity, a black aesthetic) and images or
discourses (ships, passage/"passing", Biblical reference, folk/oral
tradition, Christianity, African legend) help to problematize three of
the four keys terms in the course title: "African", "American" and
"Literature." With reference to such thinkers as Toni Morrison, Henry
Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West (U.S.A.); Frantz Fanon (France/Algeria);
Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy (U.K./Caribbean); Homi Bhabha (India);
Michel Foucault (France); and others, we'll trace the course of black
identity in and through literature in the U.S. as both a product of
social/ideological forces as well as a force itself.
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»»Required Texts and Materials
books available at Wild Iris Books, 802 W. University Ave.
- Norton Anthology Of African American Literature (Gates Jr. & McKay, eds.)
- Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
- The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
- course packet of supplementary readings
- You must have an e-mail account and web access to
participate in this course. If you don't already have these, get
them.
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»»Requirements and Grade Components
- Exam 1 = 25%
- Exam 2 = 25%
- 8-10 page paper = 30% (see paper site for details)
- total quizzes, averaged = 10%
- listserve and class participation = 10%
(see Course Policies Page for details on quizzes and exams)
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»»Course-Related Sites Links
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