Teaching the Harlem Renaissance in the 21St Century
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Curriculum Guide TEACHING THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY 1 Introduction 5 CURRICULUM MODULES G R A D E S 6 – 8 GRADES 9–12 Home + Art: Hughes, Woodson, and Me 7 Harlem Renaissance Remixed: A Humanities Module 123 KATIE HARLAN ELLER MARGARET BANKS Then & Now: A Photographic Journey 31 Speaking Our Truths: Visualizing Then and Now 135 AYELET DANIELLE ALDOUBY AND ANNE LATTNER JUDITH BURTON IN COLLABORATION WITH ARTIST MAREN HASSINGER The Call to Action: The Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance and the Threading of Meaning 47 and Community-Based Activism 143 STEPHANIE BOGGS AND CARINA MAYE MICHELLE GIBBS-SPENCER A Dream Book for Existing Otherwise 57 SARAH GERTH V.D. BERG, NANCY LESKO, RACHEL MEWES AND JACQUELINE SIMMONS Learning Objectives/Standards 166 Instruction Strategies 172 The Music of the Harlem Renaissance: Blues Performance Bibliography 174 and Analysis for Contemporary Young Musicians 83 Author Bios 184 MERCEDES YVONNE LYSAKER Exploring the Harlem and Italian Renaissance Periods Through Radio Plays 105 ELAINE PERLMAN 4 Introduction and exalts the experiences of Black Americans as an essential part of the call for and drive towards social change and transformation. While rooted in the history of the Harlem Renaissance, it illuminates points of contemporary connectivity for teachers and students who are looking to mobilize the past to better understand the present. In early 2020, after a university-wide meeting about the ongoing centennial of the Harlem Renaissance, we reflected on the far-reaching This project would not be possible without the dedication and hard work impact of the Harlem Renaissance as a vibrant artistic, political, of each of the module authors. We thank them for their unwavering educational, and cultural movement across time and space. commitment to this project. We also salute the contributions of Stephanie Litchfield, Wallach Gallery attendant; Natasha Mileshina, resource We asked ourselves, what if the Centennial were an opportunity designer; and Tonia Payne, resource copy editor. to return the Harlem Renaissance to classrooms and provide young people—particularly Black youth in the Harlem community that we all In working on this project, individually and collectively, we have learned serve—with new lenses of inquiry to explore a range of themes much more about this important period in American history the Harlem of this historic period and to make connections to contemporary local, Renaissance never truly ended but is timeless in its significance and national, and global contexts? This curriculum guide is the result of impact on many aspects of our society. Just as the artists in the those conversations and our collective response to a call to action. Wallach Art Gallery’s Uptown Triennial 2020 exhibition look to the visual culture of the Harlem Renaissance to construct new interpretative This project represents the intellectual rigor and creativity that frames that visualize and make meaning of Black life, past and present, is possible through an intentional partnership of different units across the we invite you and your students to experience this guide as a tool University that are focused on engaging the community in meaningful to do likewise. We hope that your immersion into the Harlem ways. Students and faculty with a passion for and expertise in the Renaissance through this guide is a point of entry into a journey content of the Harlem Renaissance partnered with the Wallach Art of discovery of the robust history of Blacks in America one that too Gallery, The Double Discovery Center, and Institute for Urban and often has been marginalized but that provides critical thematic Minority Education at Teachers College, Columbia University to anchors to understanding our America. volunteer the use of their pedagogical skills to design and create curriculum modules that (re)present the Harlem Renaissance with an emphasis on new scholarship about the period and its ongoing Teaching the Harlem Renaissance for the 21st Century impact on contemporary life. The module authors sought to provide Project Directors: teachers and community educators with curricula that are student- kecia hayes, PhD centered and that use critical inquiry approaches to encourage students’ examination of the materiality of different texts and media Executive Director as the means for exploring and synthesizing content to arrive The Double Discovery Center at their own new understandings of the Harlem Renaissance. Jennifer Mock Associate Director Education and Public Programs Between the launch of this project and its release, New York City, along Wallach Art Gallery with the rest of the world, was brought to halt by COVID-19. In late May 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd focused attention on the Erica Walker, EdD systemic racism that is pervasive across our nation. In this moment Professor of Mathematics Education and Director of heightened awareness of the need for change and a recognition Institute for Urban and Minority Education of the role that education can and must play, the content of this Teachers College, Columbia University resource is even more vital, so all young people can develop shared understandings of and appreciation for the sociocultural relevance and value of the Harlem Renaissance then and now. This project elevates 5 Grades 6–8 KATIE HARLAN ELLER Home + Art: Hughes, Woodson, and Me ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • What is “home”? • How does one’s sense of home inform one’s art? 7 LEARNING OBJECTIVES • Perceive events and circumstances from the OVERVIEW viewpoint of others, including people in racial • Introduce upper elementary and lower and cultural groups and/or who live under The Harlem Renaissance reflects a period of middle-school learners to the people, political and economic systems different from formative Black culture and art in the early artists, art, poetry, and ideas of the Harlem their own twentieth century. In view of its influence, Renaissance and how those resonate one Harlem connected many people and places hundred years later • Understand the relationships among various around the world (Soto, 2008). These artistic genres and media and the connections connections impacted art and culture from the • Study and make sense of various poetic forms between sociohistorical and/or sociopolitical time of the Harlem Renaissance and certainly events and the arts (e.g. how art is created to us today. In this unit, students consider • Study the Great Migration and its impact on and appreciated) the essential question, “What is home?” Harlem as a place, and on Harlem’s people through poetry, art, people, ideas, and history. and its art, from the Harlem Renaissance • Understand the link between the artist and Additionally, this unit supports academic through today society and how art forms can advocate standards related to reading, writing, speaking positions and listening, poetry, social studies, music, • Explore Harlem Renaissance poets, including visual arts, and media arts while encouraging Langston Hughes and many female poets, as • Use creative and artistic expressions to students to engage complex questions about an entry point into poetry and its themes and explore both academic and nonacademic race and further develop their own racial forms, and into Harlem Renaissance literature topics in relation to self and others and to literacy. This unit is an accessible place for facilitate meaningful connections with the students to enter into this content, particularly • Grapple with complicated questions about world of art those who have minimal knowledge of the the idea of home, including issues of migration Harlem Renaissance. Therefore, students will and immigration, race, history, memory, NOTE: explore the arts and lives of Langston Hughes, culture, and identity This module is also appropriate for grades four Romare Bearden, and other artists while and five. simultaneously considering themes of : what • Study Romare Bearden, a jazz-inspired makes a home? What is “home” to you and collage artist who was born in North Carolina, what can home mean for others? How does migrated to Harlem, and lived among many one’s sense of home inform one’s art? Harlem Renaissance artists The module begins with an introduction of • Connect Jacqueline Woodson’s free verse Langston Hughes’s “I, Too, Sing America,” memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, to themes of foreshadowing the unit’s themes of home, art, home, identity, art, as well as to the work and the impact of the Harlem Renaissance as of Langston Hughes, as she reconciles her a “conduit of culture” (Collier 2012) into our connection to places as disparate as Ohio, lives today. It also asks students to consider South Carolina, and Brooklyn race as a thoroughgoing social construct in the U.S. • Make sense of the unit’s themes and demonstrate understanding of the people, Lessons 1–3 focus on the Great Migration art, and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and its impact on the arts and the Harlem through a co-created work of art and written Renaissance, and help situate learners in their piece presented on Artists Day communities as they reckon with persisting racial segregation and white supremacy. The more students learn about and understand the causes and effects of the Great Migration, the 8 more profoundly its occurrence impacts their GREAT MIGRATION This module was originally developed to appreciation and understanding of art • Where is home for one who leaves their home? complement Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl and culture. • If a person