Literatures of the Black World (211-0-20)
Topic
Black Gothic
Instructors
Nicole Adeyinka Spigner
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-435: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
When first hearing the word "gothic," most would not think of Black authors and visual artists. However, and as acknowledged by several scholars, including the Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison, race and particularly Blackness has always been inextricable from American Gothic literature. This course will consider Morrison's claim to explore some early canonical gothic texts by Edgar Allan Poe and Kate Chopin as a foil for how Black authors and artists take up issues of haunting, monstrosity, and corporeal threat since the nineteenth century.
While we will spend a little time with white American authors, the center of this class is the production by Black artists. We will begin with the American "slave narrative," stories by fugitive and formerly enslaved Black people. Also, we will look at nineteenth-century gothic fiction and poetry by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline E. Hopkins, Adah Isaacs Menken, W.E.B. DuBois, and Charles Chesnutt. We will also read some twentieth-century gothic texts by Toni Morrison, Tananarive Due, and others. Finally, we will reach outside of the US and look at work by Caribbean and South African writers. The class will also include film, music, and visual art. The core questions of this course will include: how the gothic genre succeeds and fails for Black artists; the connections between race, slavery/apartheid, and the gothic; and the relationships between memory, history, and horror in the US and Caribbean.
Come to class ready to enthusiastically discuss myriad issues concerning race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Class Attributes
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area