ENGL 238
1930s Black Literature Fall 2024
Division I W Writing Skills
Cross-listed AFR 260

This course explores Black literary output of the 1930s in all its forms with the belief that this often under-appreciated decade contains many of the impulses that would come to structure the literary landscape in the decades that follow. These include an unflinching embrace of humor and satire, engagements with social realism, and a keen attention to notions of the radical in the international context. Special attention will be paid to how the writing pushes away from the development of what we have come to understand as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Work to be considered throughout the term comes from, among others, Marita Bonner, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, George Schuyler, Dorothy West, Richard Wright, and Octavia Wynbush.