African-American Classics

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Although issues of race and slavery have long been a prominent subject of American writing, the classic works of African-American authors are often unknown beyond the African-American community. This course will examine a selection of such classics in order to understand the works themselves, the canon of which they form a part and their relationship to comparable Euro-American works. Texts will include: David Walker’s Appeal, Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery, W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, and more.

Texts
  • Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
  • Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  • Washington, Up from Slavery
  • DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk
  • Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
  • Wright, Native Son
  • Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
  • Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Archive

TAUGHT: WINTER 2010, AUTUMN 2012, WINTER 2017, AUTUMN 2020