Weekly Schedule of Assignments
About This Page
If you're on your own computer, you may find it useful to bookmark this page, so that you can easily find out what readings and written assignments are due when, from the comfort of your own dorm room or laptop/notebook computer. I don't recommend printing off this page every time I update or revise the syllabus because it's a waste of paper--if need be, copy the relevant section off the web page into a word processing program and print that snippet off, or (even more efficient), simply note the changes on your copy of the syllabus. Please note that the links on this page lead to what I simply call the "more" page, in which I include information on how the readings fit together, issues we'll be considering in class, and suggestions for further exploration; this page may also be useful for you as you're generating potential paper topics or looking for ideas for your informal film analyses. In conjunction with the "more" page and the conceptual overview page, then, this page should give you a pretty good sense of what this course is about.
T 8/24 Introduction: What's in a Name?
Th 8/26 Read: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie McKay, "Preface: Talking Books" [NA xxvii-xli]; "Timeline: African-American Literature in Context" [NA 2612-2623]
M 8/30 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 4 pm
T 8/31 Read: Robert O'Meally, "Introduction: The Vernacular Tradition" [NA 1-5]; folktales [NA 102-125]; James Weldon Johnson, "Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry" [NA 861-884]; Zora Neale Hurston, "Characteristics of Negro Expression" and excerpts from Mules and Men [NA 1019-1041]; Colleen McElroy, "The Griots Who Know Brer Fox" [NA 2214-2215]
W 9/1 View: Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash, 1992, 113 min.
Th 9/2 GUEST LECTURE: Pat Courts, English Department, SUNY Fredonia (education/pedagogy scholar with expertise in sociolinguistics). Read: Charles Chesnutt, "The Goophered Grapevine" [NA523-532]; Paul Laurence Dunbar, selected poems [NA 884-905]; Sterling Brown, selected poems [NA 1212-1213, 1218-1219, 1224-1226]; Langston Hughes, selected poems [NA 1255-1267]
F 9/3 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 9/7 Read: William Andrews, "Introduction: The Literature of Slavery and Freedom" [NA 127-136]; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life [NA 299-369]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 9/8 View: Beloved, Jonathan Demme, 1998, 178 min.
Th 9/9 Read: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life [NA 299-369]
F 9/10 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 9/14 Read: Harriet Jacobs, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl [NA 207-245]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 9/15 View: Down in the Delta, Maya Angelou, 1998, 111 min.
Th 9/16 Read: Jacobs, cont.; Phillis Wheatley, selected poems [NA 167-177]; NA xxxi-xxxiii, 164-167, 870-877 (perspectives on Wheatley); Frances E.W. Harper, selected poems [NA 412-418]; Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Douglass" [NA 903]; Robert Hayden, "Frederick Douglass" [NA 1508-1509]. Optional (but highly recommended) reading: Charles Chesnutt, "The Passing of Grandison" [NA 532-544]; Charles Johnson, "The Education of Mingo" [NA 2509-2518]
F 9/17 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 9/21 Read: Frances Foster and Richard Yarborough, "Introduction: Literature of the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance, 1865-1919" [NA 461-472]; August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 9/22 View: Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee, 1989, 120 min.
Th 9/23 Read: Ida B. Wells, from "A Red Record" [NA 595-606]; James Weldon Johnson, "Brothers" [NA 773-775]; Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Haunted Oak" [NA 901-902]; Sterling Brown, "Sam Smiley" [NA 1225-1226]; Langston Hughes, "Song for a Dark Girl" [NA 1262-1263]; Richard Wright, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" [NA 1388-1396].
F 9/24 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 9/28 Read: Arnold Rampersad, "Introduction: Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940" [NA 929-936]; W.E.B. Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art" [NA 752-759]; Alain Locke, "The New Negro" [NA 960-970]; George Schuyler, "The Negro-Art Hokum" [NA 1170-1174]; Langston Hughes, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" [NA 1267-1271]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 9/29 View: Menace II Society, Allen and Albert Hughes, 1993, 104 min.
Th 9/30 Read: Claude McKay, from Home to Harlem and "Harlem Runs Wild" [NA 988-996]; Rudolph Fisher, "The Caucasian Storms Harlem" [NA 1187-1194]; Wallace Thurman, from Infants of the Spring [NA 1229-1239]; Langston Hughes, "The Blues I'm Playing" and excerpts from The Big Sea [NA 1271-1296]
F 10/1 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 10/4 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 4 pm
T 10/5 GUEST LECTURE: Jeffrey Tucker, English Department, University of Rochester (Delany/science fiction scholar). Read: Rudolph Fisher, "The City of Refuge" [NA 1175-1187]; Langston Hughes, "Harlem" and "A Toast to Harlem" [NA 1267, 1299-1301]; Samuel Delany, from "Atlantis: Model 1924" [NA 2342-2361]
Th 10/7 NO CLASS (OCTOBER BREAK)
T 10/12 Read: Deborah McDowell and Hortense Spillers, "Introduction: Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, 1940-1960" [NA 1319-1328]; Anne Petry, from The Street [NA 1484-1497]; Gwendolyn Brooks, selected poems [NA 1579-1591]; Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun [NA 1725-1789]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 10/13 View: Slam, Marc Levin, 1998, 100 min.; alternative: attend Angela Davis lecture on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the prison-industrial complex at the University of Rochester
Th 10/14 GUEST LECTURE: Mark Anthony Neal, English/Africana Studies, SUNY Albany (music/popular culture scholar). Read: Ralph Ellison, "The Golden Age, Time Past" (to be handed out); optional readings: James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son" and "Sonny's Blues" [NA 1679-1717]
F 10/15 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; alternative: relate Davis's lecture to the urban issues we've been discussing
M 10/18 CRITICAL RESPONSE ESSAY due by 5 pm at my office
T 10/19 David Walker, from Appeal [NA 187-188 {you may read the entire selection if you want}]; Melvin Tolson, "Dark Symphony" [NA 1331-1334]; Langston Hughes, "I Too" [NA 1258]; Frederick Douglass, from "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July" [NA 379-391]; W.E.B. Du Bois, from The Souls of Black Folk [NA 613-633, 732-740]; James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone" [NA 1659-1670]; Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" [NA 1853-1866]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 10/20 View: Sa-I-Gu, Elaine Kim, l993, 39 min.; The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Louis Massiah, 1998, 58 min.
Th 10/21 Read: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, vii-xxii, 3-33; re-read: James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone" [NA 1659-1670]; optional readings: Ralph Ellison, "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke" [NA 1541-1549]; Ishmael Reed, "Dualism" [NA 2292]
F 10/22 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 10/26 Read: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 34-195; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 10/27 View: Black Is ... Black Ain't, Marlon Riggs, 1995, 87 min.
Th 10/28 Read: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 196-295
F 10/29 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
T 11/2 Read: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 296-461; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
Th 11/4 Read: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, 462-581
F 11/5 PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PAPER due by 7 pm
T 11/9 Read: Houston Baker, "Introduction: The Black Arts Movement, 1960-1970" [NA 1791-1806]; Hoyt Fuller, "Towards a Black Aesthetic" [NA 1809-1816]; Addison Gayle, "Introduction to The Black Aesthetic" [NA 1870-1877]; Amiri Baraka, selected poems [NA 1881-1884]; Larry Neal, "The Black Arts Movement" [NA 1959-1972]; Maulana Karenga, "Black Art: Mute Matter Given Force and Function" [NA 1972-1977]; Haki R. Madhubuti, selected poems [NA 1977-1982]; Audre Lorde, "Poetry Is Not a Luxury" [NA 2210-2212]; Ishmael Reed, "Neo-HooDoo Manifesto" [NA 2297-2301]; Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" [NA 2380-2387]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; re-view: Daughters of the Dust (Fenton 105, 7:30 pm)
W 11/10 View: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Melvin Van Peebles, 1971, 97 min.
Th 11/11 Read: Gwendolyn Brooks, selected poems [NA 1591-1601]; Mari Evans, "I Am a Black Woman" [NA 1808]; Sonia Sanchez, selected poems [NA 1902-1907]; Nikki Giovanni, selected poems [NA 1982-1985]; Lucille Clifton, selected poems [NA 2219-2227]; June Jordan, selected poems [NA 2227-2237]; John Edgar Wideman, from Brothers and Keepers [NA 2328-2335]; Alice Walker, "Everyday Use" [NA 2387-2394]
F 11/12 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
M 11/15 GUEST LECTURE: Bruce Jacobs, author of Race Manners (4 pm, S-104 Williams Center); this will be the grand finale of the weekly Campus Town Hall series
T 11/16 Read: Barbara Christian, "Introduction: Literature since 1970"; Marcus Garvey, essays [NA 974-980]; Robert Hayden, "The Diver" and "Middle Passage" [NA 1499-1505]; James Baldwin, "Stranger in the Village" [NA 1670-1679]; DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
W 11/17 View: The Body Beautiful, Ngogi Onwurah, 1991, 23 min.
Th 11/18 Read: June Jordan, selected poems [NA 2230-2235]; Michelle Cliff, "Within the Veil" [NA 2463-2466]; Ntozake Shange, "Bocas: A Daughter's Geography" [NA 2523-2524]
F 11/19 FILM ANALYSIS due to listserv no later than 7 pm; POLISHED PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PAPER due to me no later than 5 pm
Week 14: NO CLASSES (THANKSGIVING BREAK)
T 11/30 Read: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, Book I (1-92); DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 7 pm
Th 12/2 Read: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, Book II (93-263)
M 12/6 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS due to listserv no later than 4 pm
T 12/7 Read: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, Book III (264-339)
Th 12/9 Read: Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People, Book IV (340-472)
M 12/13 FINAL PAPER due by 3 pm in my office