Masculinity and 20th-Century African-American Literature

3 units

This seminar considers how literature, from the Great Migration through our contemporary moment, represents and complicates myths of Blackness as a repository of masculine virility and patriarchal incapacity. Through close readings of canonical African-American literature by the likes of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, and John Edgar Wideman, this course will critically (re)define the keywords blackness and masculinity and consider the terms and implications of their interrelatedness. Working from the foundational claim that masculinity is never an established fact but rather socially constructed upon a fickle node of ceaseless anxiety and brash assertion, literature will serve as a critical site to pursue the following inquires: How does Blackness impact broader meanings of American masculinity? Further, how does Blackness both threaten and fortify masculinity? Finally, how does centering the relationship between Blackness and masculinity assist in thinking through themes of gender, race and sexuality more broadly?