AMST 164
African American Literary Culture since the 1960s Fall 2013
Division II Writing Skills
Cross-listed ENGL 164 / AFR 163
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

Is history a burden or a treasure-house, a wardrobe or a solemn duty? For African American writers and artists living and working in the long disquiet from the decline of black power movements to the rise of Barack Obama, history was always a problem. It was too close or too far away, overpowering or feeble, suffocating or strangely distant, and the desire to mark off this anxiety produced a series of “posts” that no one ever entirely believed in: “post-racial” (no), “post-black” (jk), “post-civil rights” (in all the wrong ways), “post-soul” (well, maybe). Drawing on visual art and independent film as well as poetry, prose, and drama, this course will examine a range of responses to history’s burden, its weight or its lightness, by figures such as Henry Dumas, Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Julie Dash, Harryette Mullen, Colson Whitehead, Kevin Young, Evie Shockley, and Edward P. Jones. Because this course is writing-intensive, we’ll spend significant time developing writing skills, with an emphasis on collaborative learning.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 1643
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation, regular short writing assignments, and four to five papers totaling about 20 pages
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: first-year students who have not taken or placed out of a 100-level English course
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under ENGL; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under AFR or AMST
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
AMST 164 Division II ENGL 164 Division I AFR 163 Division II

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