123220 SE Literary Seminar / BA-Arbeit / MA American/North American Lit./Studies (2023W)

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In 1619, the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived to the shores of continental North America, completing the first voyage in what was later to become known as the transatlantic slave trade. This event lay the foundations for the historically unprecedented socioeconomic system of chattel slavery that was only to be abolished over two centuries later, in 1865. In 2013, the acquittal of George Zimmerman of manslaughter in the death of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin caused the hashtag of #BlackLivesMatter to trend on Twitter. Within a couple of years, the phrase became a rallying cry of mass protests against systemic and state-sanctioned anti-Black racism in the United States and across the globe. In the 400 years that separate these two events, Black people in the U.S. and across the diaspora responded to the shifting landscapes of systemic exploitation, subjugation, and injustice in a myriad of ways, from political organizing and direct action through cultural and artistic expression. The Black literary tradition, too, has been shaped by both the difficult circumstances of its creation and the writers’ creative responses to and visions of liberation from the forces of oppression and injustice. The history of African American and Black diasporic literature has thus been a history of writing for liberation, guided by a fervent desire for legal enfranchisement, civic equality, cultural independence, and full recognition and expression of Black humanity. In this course, we will explore a representative selection of works from African American literary tradition. We will look into poetry, prose, drama, and nonfiction from the 17th century until today. Throughout the course, students will also be working on their academic writing skills, including development and support of original and debatable arguments, structure and format of the academic essay, academic writing style, research and source evaluation, and integrating and documenting primary and secondary sources.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon completion of this course, students should:
- be familiar with and able to critically and analytically discuss selected literary works by African American authors, as well as the chronological development of African American literary tradition;
- be able to situate the authors discussed in this class in their respective sociohistorical and cultural context, and to identify the historical events, sociopolitical circumstances, and cultural and literary movements that have shaped the thematic and formal qualities of their literary work;
- be able to define selected historical, theoretical, and critical terms and concepts in African American (literary) studies such as the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, abolition and emancipation, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Radical Tradition, Black nationalism, Afrocentricity, slave narrative, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, Afrofuturism, double-consciousness, vernacular tradition, signifyin(g), call-and-response, and the blues, among others;
- display a nuanced and critical understanding of and appreciation for literary texts of various genres (poetry, prose, drama, nonfiction);
- display an increased fluency in academic research, critical thinking, and academic writing, including skills such as conducting library and database research, critical engagement with and close reading of literary and cultural texts, formulation and support of original and debatable arguments, structure and format of the academic essay, academic writing style, research and source evaluation, and integrating and documenting primary and secondary sources.