African American Culture since 1900 3301-LA1314-1ST
The course covers African American culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, including literature, theater, film, and the visual arts. Source materials will be accompanied by critical texts introducing both the aesthetics and the history of African Americans. We will cover the period from the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights movement and contemporary contexts such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Our classes will be based on conversations about selected cultural texts, with attention to their form as well as its relation to the historical context and discourses on race in the USA.
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge:
- students learn the history of African American culture
- students learn the history of interracial relations in the United States
Skills:
- students learn to analyze cultural texts from formal, aesthetic, and ideological perspectives
- students are able to interpret critical and historical texts
- students are able to speak English at a B2+ level
Social competences:
- students are able to present their interpretations, readings, and views in a coherent, clear, logical, and precise manner
- students learn to participate in a debate and be aware that there are different interpretations of cultural texts
- students develop aesthetic and ethical sensitivity and awareness of the historical nature of concepts such as race, gender, and class
Assessment criteria
Assessment methods and criteria for this course
Requirements:
Continuous assessment (class preparation, participation, response papers): 50%
Final test: 50%
Over 50% in each of the segments is required for passing the course.
Attendance: no more than 3 absences allowed
Make-up test: oral or written during the instructor's office hours.
Bibliography
Kenneth W. Warren, What Was African American Literature?
Langston Hughes, selected poems
Zora Neale Hurston, selected short-stories
Ann Petry, The Street
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin In the Sun
Black Arts Movement, selected poems
James Baldwin, selected essays
Gordon Parks, Jr., Super Fly
Raoul Peck, I’m Not Your Negro
Allen Hughes, The Defiant Ones, HBO miniseries
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Jordan Peele, Nope
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: