123210 VO Literatures in English (2022S)

In 1619, the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived to the shores of continental North America, completing the first voyage in what was later to become known as the transatlantic slave trade. This event lay the foundations for the historically unprecedented socioeconomic system of chattel slavery that was only to be abolished over two centuries later, in 1865. In 2013, the acquittal of George Zimmerman of manslaughter in the death of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin caused the hashtag of #BlackLivesMatter to trend on Twitter. Within a couple of years, the phrase became a rallying cry of mass protests against systemic and state-sanctioned anti-Black racism in the United States and across the globe. In the 400 years that separate these two events, Black people in the US and across the diaspora responded to the shifting landscapes of systemic exploitation, subjugation, and injustice in a myriad of ways, from political organizing and direct action through cultural and artistic expression. The Black literary tradition, too, has been shaped by both the difficult circumstances of its creation and the writers’ creative responses to and visions of liberation from the forces of oppression and injustice. The history of African American and Black diasporic literature has thus been a history of writing for liberation, guided by a fervent desire for legal enfranchisement, civic equality, cultural independence, and full recognition and expression of Black humanity.

In this course, we will explore a representative selection of works from Black American and diasporic literary traditions to see how freedom and liberation have functioned in these texts as themes, political goals, and aesthetic principles. Our primary focus will be on African American writers, with a secondary interest in Black British, Canadian, and Caribbean authors. We will look into poetry, prose, drama, nonfiction and orature – including folk tales, speeches, and musical pieces – from the 17th century until today to explore how liberation has been fought for, expressed, and (re)defined in response to changing sociohistorical exigencies across time and place. Our guiding framework will be the concept of the Black Atlantic, coined by the British scholar Paul Gilroy to describe Black intellectual and cultural traditions across the diaspora as coming together as a “counterculture of modernity” in the global West.