The Black and Green Atlantic

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Since the eighteenth century, parallels have been drawn between the enslavement of African Americans and the marginalization of Irish Catholics in Ireland. In 1792, the Belfast newspaper the Northern Star published "The Negroe's Complaint" and "The Dying Negro" in an attempt to draw sympathy for enslaved African Americans and to also suggest that the Irish were metaphorically "slaves" in their own country. In 1845, during his lecture tour of Ireland, Frederick Douglass wrote, "I see much here to remind me of my former condition," suggesting that what he witnessed of the beginning of the Famine could be compared to slavery in the United States. Comparisons made between the Irish and African Americans continued through the twentieth century with writers from both cultures gesturing towards each other in literature. In this course we will explore African American and Irish literature. We will examine how black and Irish writers have gestured towards each other in literature, as well as the ways in which these two cultures have intersected - their shared experiences - while also focusing on important differences between the two cultures.