ENGL2417 - 01 - Literature of the Black Atlantic Black Atlantic

(LI) Literary Inquiry (AI-L) Aesthetic Inquiry Lit (DM) Diversity & Multiculturalism

Considering the Black Atlantic as a physical and theoretical space, this class surveys the developments of Black culture and consciousness in foundational texts written by Black writers who initiated a literary tradition that changed the world. Reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts, including The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The History of Mary Prince, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs/Linda Brent), and the anonymously published The Woman of Colour: A Tale, students experience the painful and liberating intersections of race, gender, and nationality through writers who create a space for their resistant voices and racial justice. In addition to these primary texts, students read twentieth- and twenty-first century interpretations of these texts by leading scholars, including Hortense Spillers, Jenny Sharpe, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sandra Pouchet Paquet.