ENGL 655 - The Harlem Renaissance

3 Credit(s)

Description:
This seminar will examine some of the major literary works of the Harlem Renaissance (also known as the New Negro movement), which flourished between the end of the World War I and the 1929 stock market crash. We will consider how the texts interact with one another thematically, politically, and aesthetically; how architects of the movement defined the New Negro and her/his are; and how contemporary critics have reconstructed the Harlem Renaissance as a major American literary period. Through the study of African-American modernism, this seminar will explore its larger implications for literary studies: the role of literature and other cultural expressions in realizing and representing “imagined communities,” in resisting and reinforcing political and social discourses, and in reflecting its own potentials and limitations in defining a social self. Authors will include W.E.B Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, and Claude Mckay.

038556:1