Africanist Presence in America Lit

4.0 credits

Toni Morrison’s essay “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” and her volume Playing in the Dark revolutionized the study of American literature. By identifying the “Africanist” presence in the work of white writers, Morrison deconstructed oppositional stances in debates about canonicity and generated new interest in—and approaches to—American fiction. Using Morrison’s claims as starting points and her methodology as an example, this course will analyze the fiction of American writers with a sensitivity for the representations and figurations of blackness in their work in order to understand those works as examples and analyses of racial discourse. The course will ask and seek to answer the following questions: How is the tradition of American literature a tradition of racial representation? How is blackness figuratively represented? What roles do such “Africanisms” play in the discursive construction of whiteness, masculinity, citizenship, and an “American” identity? In addition to Morrison’s writings, readings include novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Edgar Allan Poe, and more. Assignments include a research paper and an in-class presentation on a related work of literary criticism, as well as attendance and participation in discussion.