This course will cover a wide range of literary texts from the Modernist Period to the present day.As a class, we will study texts from various genres as we seek to understand how Black peopleconceived of race and identity in the early part of the nation’s founding. We will discuss howAfrican Americans dealt with existential issues like the concept of blackness as a cultural andpolitical idea, both in fiction and non-fiction writing. Therefore, the themes we will explore thissemester will include identity, citizenship, belonging, evolving representations of gender andsexuality, and activist and aesthetic responses to institutional and extra-legal violence.

Week One: Course Intro, Syllabus, Group Project Discussion

Week Two: Joyce A. Joyce, “The Black Canon”, Barbara Christian, “The Race for Theory”,

Henry Louis Gates, “What’s Love Got to Do with It,”, Applying theory to texts

Week Three: Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” “To Robert Hayden,” Terrance Hayes,

Richard Wright, “Long Black Song,” Deesha Phillyaw, “Instructions for Married

Christian Husbands” Theory: Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”

Week Four: Gil Scott Heron, “Whitey on the Moon,” Ross Gay, “ A Small, Needful Fact”

Raymond Patterson, “Twenty-Six Ways of Looking At a Black Man” Theory: Larry Neal, “And

Shine Swam On”

Week Five: Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens,” Tressie McMillan Cottom,

Excerpts from Thick Theory: Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, “Speaking in Tongues:

Dialogics, Dialetics, and the Black Woman’ Writer’s Literary Tradition”

Week Six: Amiri Baraka, Dutchman, Kevin Young, “Blacker Than Thou” Theory: Henry Louis

Gates, “The Signifying Monkey”

Week Seven: Ishamel Reed, “I Am a Cowboy on the Boat of Ra,” Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild,”

Tracy K. Smith, “Sci-Fi,” “My God, It’s Full of Stars” Theory: Harryette Mullen: “African Signs

and Spirit Writing”

Week Eight: James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues,” Bryan Washington, “Elgin” Theory: Robert F.

Reid-Pharr, “Tearing the Goat’s Flesh: Homosexuality, Abjection, and the Production of Late

Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity”

Week Nine: Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Claudia Rankine, Excerpt

From Citizen Theory: Christina Sharpe, Excerpts from In the Wake

Week Ten: Jamaica Kincaid, “ A Small Place” Z.Z. Packer, “Geese” Theory: Katherine

McKittrick, excerpts from Demonic Grounds

Week Eleven: Malcolm X, “Saved,” Hanif Abdurraqib, “Fear in Two Winters” Theory:

Wahneema Lubiano: “Mapping the Interstices between Afro-American Cultural Discourse and

Cultural Studies”

Week Twelve: Audre Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic,” Nafissa Thompson, “The Body’s

Defenses” Theory: Katherine McKittrick, excerpts from Demonic Grounds

Week Thirteen: Toni Morrison, “Recitatif,” Danielle Evans, “Boys Go to Jupiter” Theory:

Students select from past readings

Week Fourteen: Gwendolyn Brooks, Excerpt from Maude Martha, Margo Jefferson,

Excerpt from Negroland Theory: