Advanced Course                                                                                                              קורס בחירה

Dr. Sonia Weiner                                    soni@post.tau.ac.il                                          ד"ר סוניה וינר

 

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? How are black writers influenced by: the ideologies, allure, expectations, criticism and gaze of the white world? We will explore these questions in reference to canonic texts of the African American literary tradition (slave narratives, autobiographies, short stories, essays, novels), while reflecting on identity and racism, blues and jazz, language and the vernacular, form and voice, gender and sexuality.

 

Additionally, the course will emphasize the visual aspects of African American culture, and will explore the manner in which African American writers dealt with diverse representations of 'blackness', both thematically, as they contended with the 'meanings' of images and the manner in which they could be 'used', and formally, as photography shaped the way they 'saw' and wrote about the world.

 

Tentative Reading: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, Charles Chesnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, Etheridge Knight, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, John Wideman, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

 

All texts will be accompanied by theoretical readings which will include: Henry Louis Gates Jr., James Olney, Houston Baker, Addison Gayle Jr., Werner Sollors, Shawn Michelle Smith, Deborah Willis, bell hooks, Sara Blair, Hazel Carby, Larry Neale and Deborah McDowell.

 

Course Requirements:

Midterm – In Class

Final – Take Home