Black Lit Course Spring 2015
AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AML 3604
Class Meeting Day and Time: Tuesdays, 6:30—9:15 pm; CPR 481
Professor: Dr. Gary L. Lemons Department: English
Office: Cooper Hall 331 Office Hours: T/TH 5:00—6:15 pm Ph. 813-974-2421
Email: glemons@usf.edu
Required Course Texts—SEE NEW REVISED READING AND WRITING SCHEDULE
1. African American Literature Packet: Course AML 3604 (Purchase at Pro-Copy, 5219 East Fowler Ave., 988-5900, open 24hrs.—7 days)
2. Color Struck: A Play in Four Scenes by Zora Neale Hurston (copy given out in class)
3. The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
4. Pocket Style Manual by Diana Hacker (USF Bookstore)
Course Concept
According to African American novelist John Edgar Wideman, who wrote the preface to Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Fiction, “…African-American writers have a special, vexing [displeasurable, annoying, irksome, irritating, angry, aggravating exasperating] stake in reforming, revitalizing the American imagination…Good stories transport us to…extraordinarily diverse regions where individual lives are enacted” (v—vi). In Killing Rage: Ending Racism, bell hooks speaks pointedly to why African American writers have a “vexing stake in reforming, revitalizing the American imagination.” She says it has to do with the topic of “race talk” and issues of racism and gender. hooks asserts:
When race and racism are the topic in public discourse the voices that speak are male. There is no large body of social and political critique by women of the topics of race and racism. When women write about race we usually situate our discussion within a framework where the focus is not centrally on race. We write and speak about race and gender, race and representation, etc. Cultural refusal to listen to and legitimate the power of women speaking about the politics of race and racism in America is a direct reflection of a long tradition of sexist and racist thinking which has always represented race and
Class Meeting Day and Time: Tuesdays, 6:30—9:15 pm; CPR 481
Professor: Dr. Gary L. Lemons Department: English
Office: Cooper Hall 331 Office Hours: T/TH 5:00—6:15 pm Ph. 813-974-2421
Email: glemons@usf.edu
Required Course Texts—SEE NEW REVISED READING AND WRITING SCHEDULE
1. African American Literature Packet: Course AML 3604 (Purchase at Pro-Copy, 5219 East Fowler Ave., 988-5900, open 24hrs.—7 days)
2. Color Struck: A Play in Four Scenes by Zora Neale Hurston (copy given out in class)
3. The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
4. Pocket Style Manual by Diana Hacker (USF Bookstore)
Course Concept
According to African American novelist John Edgar Wideman, who wrote the preface to Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Fiction, “…African-American writers have a special, vexing [displeasurable, annoying, irksome, irritating, angry, aggravating exasperating] stake in reforming, revitalizing the American imagination…Good stories transport us to…extraordinarily diverse regions where individual lives are enacted” (v—vi). In Killing Rage: Ending Racism, bell hooks speaks pointedly to why African American writers have a “vexing stake in reforming, revitalizing the American imagination.” She says it has to do with the topic of “race talk” and issues of racism and gender. hooks asserts:
When race and racism are the topic in public discourse the voices that speak are male. There is no large body of social and political critique by women of the topics of race and racism. When women write about race we usually situate our discussion within a framework where the focus is not centrally on race. We write and speak about race and gender, race and representation, etc. Cultural refusal to listen to and legitimate the power of women speaking about the politics of race and racism in America is a direct reflection of a long tradition of sexist and racist thinking which has always represented race and