| Modern African-American Literature: Post-Soul Aesthetics |
| DozentIn:Jatin Wagle |
| Veranstaltungstyp:Seminar (Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen) |
| Ort:41/B11: Di. 16:00 - 18:00 (10x),
41/E07: Di. 16:00 - 18:00 (4x) |
| Semester:SoSe 2023 |
Zeiten:Di. 16:00 - 18:00 (wöchentlich), Ort: 41/B11, 41/E07
Erster Termin:Dienstag, 11.04.2023 16:00 - 18:00, Ort: 41/E07 |
Beschreibung:African-American literature after the 1960s has been described in terms of New Black or “post-soul” Aesthetics. Evidently, these terms characterize the social experiences as well as the literary and cultural expressions of African-Americans who came of age in the post-civil rights era. They also indicate a complex, almost ambivalent relationship with older genres, forms, and themes that dominated African-American literature in the first half of the twentieth century. In this course in American Studies we will attempt to explore the politics of African American literary and cultural production in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, by taking up a wide range of critical, analytical, and literary texts.
In order to take and enjoy this class, you should be willing to read, analyze, and discuss complex analytical, theoretical, and literary texts.
Please note that this course will take up literary/cultural texts that might be viewed as offensive, especially because of their racially explicit vocabulary and imagery. This should not be seen as an attempt at normalizing racist epithets or attitudes, but on the contrary as an opportunity to appreciate and examine literary and cultural expression that tackles and critiques the murky realities of racism.
As part of your assigned work in this seminar, all the course participants would need to carefully prepare the reading(s) allotted for a session, develop points of discussion, respond to the reading(s) via annotations on Google Docs. If you have queries or doubts, they should also be raised on the digital, collaborative tools. The due dates for your contributions will be mentioned in the syllabus wiki. Our weekly, in-person meetings will be assisted by expert groups/session presenters.
We will be discussing the following primary texts in our course:
Paul Beatty, _The White Boy Shuffle_ (1996) [Oneworld Publications, 2017, ISBN: 978-1-78607-225-2] (Available, for instance, at https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1044143388)
Percival Everett, _The Trees_ (2021) [Influx Press, 2022, ISBN: 978-1-914391-17-0] (Available, for instance, at https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1062456250)
Please procure these books and start reading them. |
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