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

Instructors

Nicole A Spigner

Meeting Info

Locy Hall 318: Mon, Wed 9:30AM - 10:50AM

Overview of class

When first hearing the word "Gothic," most would not think of Black authors and visual artists. However, as acknowledged by several scholars, including the Nobel Prize-winning Toni Morrison, race—and particularly Blackness—has always been inextricable from American Gothic literature. There is a great misconception that Black writers and visual artists merely appropriated British and American Gothic conventions; however, this course is designed to acknowledge the African and Black syncretic roots of American Gothic specifically. Additionally, we will explore issues of race that are deeply embedded in the American Gothic tradition, regardless of authorship.
Taking Morrison's claim into account, this course will consider some early canonical Gothic texts by Edgar Allan Poe and Kate Chopin as a foil for how Black authors and artists have taken up issues of haunting, monstrosity, and corporeal threat since the nineteenth century. We will also consider the connections between Black Gothic art and African-based cosmology, storytelling, and ritual.
While we will spend a little time with white American authors, the center of this class is production by Black artists. We will begin with the American "slave narrative," personal accounts by fugitive and formerly enslaved Black people. We will look at nineteenth-century Gothic poetry and fiction by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Charles Chesnutt, read twentieth-century Gothic texts by Toni Morrison and others, and watch Gothic films made since the mid-1990s. Furthermore, we will reach outside of the U.S. to look at work within the larger African diaspora. Finally, we will read several works by literary and cultural critics that present arguments and deep readings of our primary assigned literature and film.
The class will also include television, music, and visual art. The core issues of this discussion-based 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 U.S. and Caribbean.

Come to class ready to enthusiastically discuss myriad issues concerning race, gender, class, and sexuality.

Learning Objectives

The ability to demonstrate a critical understanding of and appreciation for the Black gothic literature and literary forms, themes, key terms, allusions, and symbolism.

The ability to understand, appreciate, compare and contrast, and apply critical lenses to Black-authored gothic texts across at least the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but with an eye on the eighteenth and twenty first centuries.

The ability to develop a reasonable interpretation of one or more stories, novels, or films assigned for this course.

The ability to identify the relationship between shifting symbolism in the Black gothic literary tradition as it relates to culturally specific issues and histories.

Class Materials (Required)

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon: ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400033423

Class Attributes

Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: PRE-REG: Reserved for Black Studies majors & minors.