ENGL 307
The 19th Century and Its Shadow Fall 2020
Division I
Cross-listed AFR 303 / ENGL 307
This is not the current course catalog

This course explores canonical American literature from the nineteenth century alongside a selection of contemporary literary and cinematic texts that call on and intervene with this body of work. Following Toni Morrison’s charge that the contemplation of a black presence “is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of the literary imagination,” this course focuses on how ideas of race are explored throughout the canon and how they have been carried forward. Works considered throughout the term come from, among others, Julie Dash, Frederick Douglass, Saidiya Hartman, Harriet Jacobs, Mat Johnson, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, Nate Parker, Edgar Allen Poe, Quentin Tarantino, Mark Twain, and Colson Whitehead.