The Great Debate: Wright, Hurston, and the Meaning of Twentieth-Century Black American Literature

This course will consider the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, perhaps the two most consequential Black writers of the 20th century. We will explore their supposed disagreements and surprising alignments through four critical lenses: their fraught history with the white publishing industry, their representations of the American south, their understanding of art's relationship to politics, and their positioning within the American literary canon today.