English 459 E SEMINAR IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE, M. Thompson. M 1-2:50
TOPIC: Transnationalism in Twentieth-Century African-American Literature

The goal of this course shall be to provide the student with an in-depth understanding of the relationship between African-American literature and global politics in the twentieth century. Placing special emphasis on the period between the two World Wars, this course demonstrates that African American writers were influenced across the Black Atlantic not only by Leftist politics, but also by various radical, rightwing European and Caribbean ultranationalist programs, and European fascism. The critical method of the course shall be the formulation of a definition of "globalism" in literature through contemporary criticism’s various debates over Transnationalism and the Black Atlantic, followed by readings of the primary literary documents as they relate to twentieth-century global politics. Ultimately this course seeks to complicate African American literary studies as it resituates twentieth-century African American literary history within a wider global context than it is normally positioned, and to show rigorously that ideologies from across the political spectrum can be found in the work of African American authors more commonly than assumed.

TEXTS: (Possible) Richard Wright, The Outsider; W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess; George Schuyler, Black Empire; Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain and Tell My Horse; Marcus Garvey, A Message to the People; various manifestoes of the Black Arts Movement; Claude McKay, A Long Way from Home; Paul Gilroy’s, The Black Atlantic; Franz Fanon’s, The Wretched of the Earth.