Seminar: The Harlem Renaissance

3 credits

This course explores the early-twentieth-century period of black artistic production alternately referred to as the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Renaissance. Challenging traditional views of Harlem as the epicenter of the period, we will read Harlem as a particularly prominent geographic site among many no less vibrant and no less significant sites across the country, the hemisphere and the Atlantic. Examining a wide range of artistic genres and mediums, we join these black artists, scholars, and leaders as they interrogate the relationships between art and politics; freedom and equality; culture and cultured; and blackness and personhood. In our examinations, we will be especially attentive to two contrasting lines of inquiries: 1) What historical, geographic, and socio-economic factors shape the contours of this Renaissance and its legacies? And 2) How might this Renaissance speak to our current questions about race, representation, and what, if anything, is American?