College Seminar (101-6-25)
Topic
Great Migrations, Folk Life, Chicago Renaissance
Instructors
Tracy L Vaughn
8474913725
1860 Campus Dr Crowe 5-103
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 4-410: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
NOTE: This class is open only to first-year undergraduates selected to be Kaplan Humanities Scholars.
A Place Called Home: Great Migrations, Folk Life, and The Chicago Renaissance
"By the time the Great Migration was over," writes Isabel Wilkerson in the epilogue to her sprawling "epic story" The Warmth of Other Suns, "few Americans had not been touched by it." From World War I through the end of the Vietnam War, African Americans kept coming out of the American South, to the North and West, mostly to cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Tulsa, Cleveland, Detroit, Wichita, St. Louis, and Kansas City. Like many other migrants and immigrants, they were often obstructed, misrepresented, and rebuked on the beginnings and ends (not to mention in the middles) of their trips. Yet they kept coming, and their movement, as well as its aftermath, culturally redefined the United States, along with the migrants themselves.
This seminar will be an intensive, interdisciplinary study of literature, music, film, and visual art produced during and about the first and second waves of the Great Migration, from roughly 1917 until 1970. We will explore the Chicago Renaissance as a cultural flowering of the Migration's first wave, and consider the philosophical and cultural critiques offered by the African American intelligentsia of the period. In addition, we will examine the migration of Black Folklife—faith practices, music, foodways, and vernacular iterations—and chart its impacts across and beyond the US. Finally, the class will explore what some sociologists and urban studies scholars have called a "reverse migration," citing a statistical exodus of African Americans out of the Great Migration's destination cities in numbers that now rival or exceed the movement itself. We will also focus on themes of home, community, and physical place and space, ideas that we imagine will be especially resonant for first-year students.
Possible excursions and course enhancements
Chicago will provide an important site, connection, and laboratory for the course; we anticipate availing students of local institutions and archives including the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
Other course enhancements might include guest speakers and students may also work with journalists and oral historians via the Invisible Institute
Class Materials (Suggested)
Sample course texts may include
Clarke Hine, Darlene. Black Chicago Renaissance
Griffin, Farrah Jasmine. Who Set You Flowin'
Angelou, Maya. Down in The Delta (film, 1998)
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Perry, Tyler. Madea's Family Reunion (film, 2006)
Larsen, Nella. Passing
Reed, Christopher. Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance
Stewart, Jacqueline. Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity
Toomer, Jean. Cane
King, George. Goin' to Chicago: Personal Stories of the Great African American Migration (film, 1994).
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns
Burnett, Charles. To Sleep With Anger (film, 1990)
Williams, Spencer. The Blood of Jesus (film, 1941)
Petty, Audrey. High-Rise Stories: Voices From Chicago Public Housing
Lee, Spike. Crooklyn (film, 1994)
Stahl, John. Imitation of Life (film, 1934)
Scarborough, William et al, Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago?
Class Notes
NOTE: This class is open only to first-year undergraduates selected to be Kaplan Humanities Scholars.
Class Attributes
WCAS College Seminar
Enrollment Requirements
Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for First Year & Sophomore only
Add Consent: Department Consent Required
Drop Consent: Department Consent Required