African American Culture since 1900

elective courses

The course discusses twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American culture, including literature, theater, film, and the visual arts. Primary sources will be complemented by critical texts introducing both the aesthetics and the history of African Americans.

The course covers African American culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, including literature, theater, film, and the visual arts. Source materials will be accompanied by critical texts introducing both the aesthetics and the history of African Americans. We will cover the period from the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights movement and contemporary contexts such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Our classes will be based on conversations about selected cultural texts, with attention to their form as well as its relation to the historical context and discourses on race in the USA.

Kenneth W. Warren, What Was African American Literature?

Langston Hughes, selected poems

Zora Neale Hurston, selected short-stories

Ann Petry, The Street

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin In the Sun

Black Arts Movement, selected poems

James Baldwin, selected essays

Gordon Parks, Jr., Super Fly

Raoul Peck, I’m Not Your Negro

Allen Hughes, The Defiant Ones, HBO miniseries

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

Jordan Peele, Nope

Knowledge:

- students learn the history of African American culture

- students learn the history of interracial relations in the United States

Skills:

- students learn to analyze cultural texts from formal, aesthetic, and ideological perspectives

- students are able to interpret critical and historical texts

- students are able to speak English at a B2+ level

Social competences:

- students are able to present their interpretations, readings, and views in a coherent, clear, logical, and precise manner

- students learn to participate in a debate and be aware that there are different interpretations of cultural texts

- students develop aesthetic and ethical sensitivity and awareness of the historical nature of concepts such as race, gender, and class

Assessment methods and criteria for this course

Requirements:

Continuous assessment (class preparation, participation, response papers): 50%

Final test: 50%

Over 50% in each of the segments is required for passing the course.

Attendance: no more than 3 absences allowed

Make-up test: oral or written during the instructor's office hours.