ENGL 21023 - Black Modernisms and Global Modernities

Course Credit: 1
This class will explore several versions of black modernism through close study of novels, poetry, and criticism. Our study of black modernism means that we will explore writings by African-American, Caribbean, and African authors as modernist texts, but also that we will reflect on how “blackness” is historically produced by and within a certain experience of global modernity. We will think of modernisms in the plural in order to consider different temporal iterations of black modernist experiment, beyond the traditional chronology focusing on the early 20th century. Topics include: the blues as a “counter-culture of modernity,” the “Harlem Renaissance” as a transnational movement, civil rights and Cold War aesthetics, the Black Arts movement, and contemporary critical debates around “Afro-pessimism.” [AH]