Intendierte Lernergebnisse
Students will gain a basic knowledge of contemporary African American literature and culture, especially with respect to narratives about slavery. They will be able to think critically about major U.S. cultural discourses and a variety of literary genres in relation to the history of African American enslavement. Students will improve their research, analytical, and writing skills, and advance their competence in interpreting texts within their specific socio-cultural and historical contexts from a perspective that problematizes race, class, and gender.
Lehrmethodik
This course is designed to emphasize in-class student participation. Teaching methods include short input lectures, short oral presentations on selected topics by students, in-class discussion of assigned primary and theoretical texts through close readings, and group discussion.
Inhalt/e
Musing about slavery and her reasons for writing Beloved, Toni Morrison once lamented the lack of “suitable memorial sites,” places “you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves.” This class turns to the ways in which contemporary African American culture has been addressing this lack Morrison noted in 1989 in various ways by creating narratives about slavery. We will explore the places, understood as discursive “memorial sites,” that contemporary Black culture creates to speak about the period of American slavery across various media and in contemporary texts ranging from poetry and novels (e.g. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016)), to films and series (e.g. Donald Glover’s Atlanta (2016-2022)). Our focus will be on the various different modes of signifying on, remembering, or even reenacting slavery, and on questions of (re)memory, (cultural) trauma, reparations, and “new” forms of slavery.
Literatur
Required texts (please purchase!)Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad. (any edition)Edward P. Jones, The Known World. (any edition)