Literatures of the Black World (211-0-20)

Topic

Black Love in Literature

Instructors

Nicole A Spigner

Meeting Info

Kresge Cent. Hall 2-380 Kaplan: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

This course offers an in-depth exploration of the diverse expressions of love in twentieth-century African American literature, film, and music. While many U.S. Black literature courses center primarily on themes of racial struggle, systemic oppression, and historical trauma, this class takes a complementary but distinct approach: we will examine love as a radical, resilient, and transformative force in Black life and cultural production. We will trace the manifold ways that Black writers, filmmakers, and musicians have articulated love—as romantic desire, self-affirmation, familial devotion, friendship, and communal care—as integral to the Black experience in the United States.

Throughout the quarter, we will consider how love operates not in spite of struggle but alongside it, as both a form of resistance and a strategy for survival, healing, and thriving. We will ask: What does it mean to love under the weight of structural racism? How is love sustained, celebrated, or challenged within Black communities? How do these representations complicate mainstream narratives about Black life?

Our inquiry begins with Zora Neale Hurston's seminal novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, where we will investigate the contours of romantic love, agency, and voice in the rural American South during the 1930s. We will explore maternal love and generational wisdom in Langston Hughes's poem "Mother to Son," and filial love and identity formation in James McBride's memoir The Color of Water.

We will also engage with a rich selection of Black films—such as Love Jones, Set It Off, and Soul Food—as visual texts that portray varied dimensions of intimacy, friendship, and familial bonds. Alongside this, we will listen closely to the music of artists like Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, The O'Jays, Sly & The Family Stone, Sam Cooke, Sister Sledge, and Bill Withers, analyzing how these musicians give voice to love of self, love of others, and love of Black community as acts of joy, resistance, and political expression.

This class is both analytical and creative in nature. Students will be expected to actively participate in discussions, complete assigned readings and viewings, and come prepared to engage deeply with the texts and themes. Coursework will include at least one group presentation, a final multimedia project, and various in-class writing assignments and collaborative activities.

Throughout the quarter, students will be invited to bring in their own selections of contemporary Black media—literary, musical, or visual—that engage with the theme of love, creating a bridge between the historical texts we study and our current cultural moment. Ultimately, the course invites us to reimagine love not as a private sentiment but as a vital, collective force that shapes how Black people have understood themselves, their communities, and their futures.

Learning Objectives

Students will become familiar with the history, theories, and literatures of Black twentieth-century authors, artists, and social critics that explore themes of love in their work and be able to demonstrate that familiarity by being able to read and write critically about these works. If this course does its job, you will leave it capable of the above, as expanded in the following outcomes:

Observe: The ability to understand and appreciate key terms relevant to Black literature and art of the twentieth century that explore a variety of kinds of love by and for Black people.

Critique: The ability to understand, appreciate, and apply theoretical lenses of literary critics of Black literature and art of the twentieth century that explore a variety of kinds of love by and for Black people.

Reflect: The ability to identify common or culturally specific themes in Black literature and art of the twentieth century that explore a variety of kinds of love by and for Black people.

Express: The ability to develop a reasonable interpretation of one or more pieces of Black literature and art of the twentieth century that explore a variety of kinds of love by and for Black people.

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area