Week 13: Multiculturalism and “New Sincerity”

The readings for this week are no less “postmodern” than what we’ve discussed last week; however, they are all postmodern in a somewhat different way. Rather than with philosophical and linguistic experiment per se, they are thematically engaged with the postmodern condition of living in a globalized and multicultural world. This world, like the philosophically

Weeks 11, 12, and Beyond: Postmodernism

All the readings scheduled from Week 11 onward are, in one way or another, postmodern texts. Postmodernism is a term used in a variety of ways, and critics and theorists from various disciplines of arts and sciences continue to disagree about its precise meaning – perhaps aptly so, as the uncertainty of meaning, distrust of

Week 10: After 1945 – An Introduction

Allen Ginsberg reading “America” Sylvia Plath reading “Lady Lazarus” Blythe Danner reading “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop Frank O’Hara reading “The Day Lady Died” – film fragment providing context for the poem Gwendolyn Brooks reading “We Real Cool.” Also, please see the wonderful animation + musical score for the poem on Poetry Foundation’s website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/video/142394/we-real-cool

Writing the Civil Rights: Wright, Ellison, Baldwin

Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” Wright decides to tell his story of “Jim Crow education” in the form of several anecdotes or vignettes – short narratives that usually illustrate a single event. Why, do you think, he decides to narrate his experience in this

Week 9: African American Poetry and Civil Rights – A Selection

Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” refers to a real-life event that took place in 1963, when a group of white supremacists planted a bomb in an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, to terrorize the local Black community. Four little girls were killed in the attack. Why, do you think, Randall chooses the form of a

Week 9: (Before and Beyond) The Civil Rights Movement – An Introduction

After the Civil War, a series of legal acts effectively abolished chattel slavery in the United States and introduced – at least in theory – a series of civil rights for the previously enslaved African Americans. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declared that neither “slavery nor involuntary servitude,

Week 8: The Harlem Renaissance – W.E.B. DuBois and Zora Neale Hurston

W.E.B. DuBois W.E.B. DuBois, “The Comet” 1. W.E.B. DuBois is known primarily as a historian, sociologist, philosopher, and civil rights activist, and only secondarily as a fiction writer. It thus comes as no surprise that “The Comet” – like many works of science fiction – imagines a futuristic/post-apocalyptic scenario to deliver a commentary about the

Week 8: The Harlem Renaissance – Langston Hughes and Claude McKay

Langston Hughes Langston Hughes Listen to Langston Hughes explain how he came to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and read the poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cKDOGhghMU. Does the story he tells help you better understand the poem? What does each of the rivers in the poem symbolize (look them up online to see where they are

Week 8: The Harlem Renaissance – An Introduction

The Harlem Renaissance is the name of an artistic and intellectual current in African-American literature, art, music, and philosophy that took place primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the Great Migration of African Americans from the predominantly rural South to cities in the North, the New York City neighborhood of Harlem – among some

Week 7: Modernist Poetry

As you read the poems for this week, I recommend you follow the steps listed in the “How to Read a Poem” handout, and refresh your memory of the poetic devices listed there. You can find the handout uploaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/home/History%20of%20literature%20SEM%202?preview=HO_How+to+Read+a+Poem+and+Literary+Devices+handout.pdf T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) Discussion questions (partially adapted