Make a Body Riot: Laughter, Resistance, and African American Literature

How does what makes us laugh position us, either as audience or collaborator? What do comedy and performance have to show us about identity formation in relation to race, class, and gender? How might laughter—as release, as physical expression, as indicator of one’s interior life, or as protest—help us understand aesthetic, thematic, rhetorical, and political aspects of African American literature? This course centers on the development of African American literature throughout the twentieth century—including the role of Black literature in society; the intersections of race, class, and gender; slavery’s afterlives; the historical novel; and the role of humor in community formation.