African-American Literature and Culture Elective Course Selected Readings Andrzej Antoszek The Catholic University of Lublin English Department Al. Raclawickie 14 20-950 Lublin, Poland e-mail: [email protected]
Contemporary Black Literature and Culture (and its Influences on Eastern European Culture)” consists of two major parts, the first focusing on a general presentation of Black Culture and Literature and the metamorphoses they have gone through since World War II. Perceived oftentimes as homogenous, Black Culture escapes easy simplifications and generalizations, yet is not infrequently closed to outsiders. Probably the best chance to get to know it is to look into it through various cultural channels, including literature, movies or music. The first section of the course offers students a chance to look at the period between late 1940s and late 1970s through various cultural utterances (Martin Luther King, Black Panthers, the Voting Rights Act, Spike Lee etc.) in order to present them with a background of what eventually came out as an explosion of commodified Black Culture in the 1980s and, particularly, 1990s. Having (suddenly) emerged as attractive and commercially powerful – through such utterances and performances as rap music, the NBA and, literature – Black Culture suddenly crossed the boundaries of the peripheral, suppressed and black. This change has been reflected in contemporary African- American literature, where, in addition to the works of such acclaimed African-American writers as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison or Ishmael Reed, there is a whole plethora of new works by less celebrated but equally important and representative writers: Gayl Jones, Michelle Cliff or Edwidge Danticat. The goal of the course is also to analyze Black Culture’s influences on contemporary (Eastern) European culture, whose face has been rapidly changing since the transformations initiated in 1989. Often perceived as outlawed, Black Culture has been appropriated by contemporary European intellectuals and even put on a pedestal. This appropriation includes music (the whole generation of European hip-hop groups adopting African-American patterns to their local environment), movies (films referring openly to African-American productions, like Kusturica’s Black Cat White Cat or Aron Gauder’s Nyocker) and, mainly, literature, ‘translating’ such African-American notions like ‘brothers’, ‘neighborhood’ or ‘black pride’ into indigenous forms, where the black heritage is still very traceable.
Tentative Schedule (subject to many changes after a discussion with students): African‐American Culture Elective Course Selected “Texts” * In bold and italics – movies Semester I Week I Introduction to Black History + Toni Morrison’s Beloved Week II Movie (if students wish to watch it) Week III Toni Morrison: Beloved (intro) Week IV Toni Morrison: Beloved (text + critical voices)/Movie: Beloved Week V Rap and Hip Hop (intro) – the politics and poetics of the genre Week VI Rap and Hip Hop (outro)/ Movie + Criticism: Style Wars/Scratch/Beef/The Hip Hop Years Part I/II/III/The Game/Biggie and Two Pac/50 Cent Refuse to Die etc. Criticism: Nelson George, Buppies, B‐boys, Bap, & Bohos; Notes on Post‐Soul Culture and any of the above ⇑ Week VII Gayl Jones, Corregidora; Introduction; The Blues Week VIII Gayl Jones, Corrigedora/Movie: Mo’ Better Blues/The Piano Lesson/Native Son/Martin Scorcese presents the Blues Week IX Selected Criticims: Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You; Popular Culture from the Hood or Beyond, bell hooks, et al, Leon E. Wynter, American Skin; Pop Culture, Big Business & the End of White America, other ⇑ Week X Student’s Choice Week XI The New Black Poetry: Harryette Mullen, Trimmings; Interview with Harryette Mullen, Contemporary Literature Evaluation: Essay or Project
Semester II Week I Student’s Choice Week II Basketball: Intro/Criticism, Nelson George, “The Sound of Dunking,” Walter LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism/Movie: He Got Game, Hoop Dreams, Through the Fire, Allen Iverson: The Answer, Kobe Bryant; Beyond the Glory Week III Mita Banerjee, Race-ing the Century (excerpts) Week IV Black Art/Movie: Basquiat Week V Alice Walker: Color Purple/Movie Color Purple Week VI Nathan McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler/Movie: Superfly Week VII Black Cinema + Criticism: Spike Lee, Bamboozled Week VIII Student’s Choice Week IX Ralph Ellison; Invisible Man Week X Criticism: Tom Byers on Pleasantville PLEASANTVILLE Week XI W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk Week XII Transmitting/Translating/Transnating + Dorota Masłowska, Wojna polsko ruska pod flagą biało czerwoną/Movie: Krew z nosa, Blokersi Week XIII Transmitting/Translating/Transnating – European Appropriations of Blackness Week XIV Students Presentations Evaluation: Presentations
Further Readings
# Autor Title 1 Angelou, Maya I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes On the Pulse of Morning 2 Bambara, Toni Cade The Salt Eaters
3 Baraka, Amiri Transbluesency: Selected Poems Daggers and Javelins Blues People 4 Butler, Octavia Kindred Adulthood Rites Imago 5 Cary, Lorene Black Ice 6 Cliff, Michelle No Telephone to Heaven Bodies of Water 7 Delany, Samuel Neveryone Times Square Red, Times Square Blue Heavenly Breakfast 8 Douglas, Frederick Narrative of the Life of an American Slave 9 DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk 10 Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man 11 Hughes, Langston The Best Short Stories of Negro Writers Something in Common and Other Stories The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes The Book of Rhythms I Wonder as I Wander 12 Johnson, Charles Middle Passage The Sorcerer's Apprentice Being and Race 13 Jones, Gayl Corregidora Liberating Voices 14 Lorde, Audre Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New, Revised A Burst of Light The Cancer Journals The Marvellous Arithmetics of Distance 15 Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X 16 McCall, Nathan Makes me Wanna Holler 17 McPherson, James Alan Elbow Room 18 Morrison, Toni Beloved Song of Solomon Jazz Sula 19 Mosley, Walter Devil in a Blue Dress Gone fishin' A red death 20 Naylor, Gloria Mama Day Linden Hilts The Woman of Brewster Place Children of the Night Bailey's Cafe 21 Reed, Ishmael Mumbo Jumbo, Flight to Canada Multi America Airing Dirty Laundry Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down 22 Walker, Alice The Colour Purple 23 Whitehead, Colson The Intuitionist 24 Wideman, John Edgar Brothers and Keepers Philadelphia Fire Basic Criticism # Author Title Andrews, William L. The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature 1 Bloom, Harold Toni Morrison 2 Butler Evans, Elliot Race, Gender and Desire 3 Fossett,JudithJackson (ed. and preface); Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the Tucker,JeffreyA. (ed. and preface); New Century. New York, NY : New York UP, 1997. Painter,NellIrvin (foreword); Rampersad,Arnold xiv, 268 pp. (foreword); Kelley,RobinD.G. (introd.) 4 Gates, Henry Louis (ed.) The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature 5 Gutman, Katharina Celebrating the Senses 6 Hakutani,Yoshinobu (ed.); Butler,Robert (ed.) The City in African-American Literature. Madison, NJ : Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1995. 265 pp 7 Jablon, Madelyn Black Metafiction 8 Lee, A. Robert Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America. London, England : Pluto, 1998. ix, 259 pp. 9 Magil, Frank Nothern, Nielsen, Aldan Lynn Black Chant; Languages of African American Postmodernism 10 Mitchell,Angelyn (ed.) Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present. Durham, NC : Duke UP, 1994. xii, 530 pp. 11 Nunez,Elizabeth (ed. and introd.); Greene- Defining Ourselves: Black Writers in the 90s. New BrendaM. (ed.) York, NY : Peter Lang, 1999. x, 250 pp. 12 Ojo,AdeFemi (ed.) Of Dreams Deferred, Dead or Alive: African Perspectives on African-American Writers. Westport, CT : Greenwood, 1996. xv, 193 pp 13 Palumbo-Liu-David (ed.) The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions. Minneapolis : U of Minnesota P, 1995. vii, 304 pp.
More Criticism: Todd Boyd Am I Black Enough For You (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997) The New H.N.I.C.; The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop (New York: New York University Press, 2002) Young Blacks Rich and Famous; The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion ad the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2003) Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional; Fighting the Culture Wars in America (Boston: beacon Press, 1997) Leon E. Wynter, American Skin; Pop Culture, Big Business & the End of White America (New York: Crown publishers, 2002) Bakari Kitwana, The Hip Hop Generation; Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002) Nelson George, Buppies, B-Boys, Baps, & Bohos; Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001) Bell Hooks, We Real Cool; Black Men and Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 2004) Monique Guillory and Richard C. Green, ed., Soul; Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure (New York: New York University Press, 1998) Murray Forman, The ‘Hood Comes First; Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002) Mark Anthony Neal, Soul Babies; Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (New York: Routledge, 2002) Robert Lee, Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America (London: Pluto, 1998)
Movies any Spike Lee movie(s) Beloved Boyz 'n' the Hood Celebrating Bird El Hajj Malik El Shabazz Gridlock'd Monk: Straight No Chaser Sarah Vaughan The Many Faces of Lady Day The Price of the Ticket The Autobiography of Mss Jane Pittman Native Son The Piano Lesson Hoop Dreams Round Midnight Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song Shaft Superfly Cleopatra Jones Cotton Comes to Harlem
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