BA Advanced Course            Spring Semester                              soni@post.tau.ac.il

How does a literary tradition emerge within an illiterate group? How do slavery, prejudice, discrimination and racism inform and influence the evolving tradition throughout the years? What role is played by the white world; how are black writers influenced by its ideology, allure, expectations and criticism? In exploring these questions, we will read and discuss canonic texts of the African American literary tradition (slave narratives, autobiographies, short stories, essays, novels), considering identity and racism, blues and jazz, language and the vernacular, form and voice, gender and sexuality.

 

Tentative Reading: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Dubois, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison.