Termine im WS 2012/13 - Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität ...

writers and intellectuals of the period negotiate how blackness should be represented
in literature and art. Thus, the ideas of the “talented tenth” and the “the new negro”
are put forward in Alain Locke’s seminal anthology The New Negro (1925). In order
to understand different approaches to the representation of blackness, we will read
excerpts from Locke’s anthology against its historical background and address the
response of the younger generation of Harlem Renaissance artists put forward in the
literary magazine Fire!! (1926). We will also address the philosophical context by
discussing W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of double consciousness and relate African
American texts to a modernist aesthetics, which emerged at the same time. In
addition to discussing shorter texts, such as the poetry of Langston Hughes and
Claude McKay, we will address two novels, Nella Larsen’s Passing (1928) and
Wallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring (1932). Near the end of our seminar we will
discuss how the period of the Harlem Renaissance is remembered in contemporary
texts and films by black artists. The requirements for a Seminar are active
participation and a term paper, those for an Übung active participation and a written
assignment.
David Lewis, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (1995).
Nella Larsen: Passing (1929).
Wallace Thurman: Infants of the Spring (1932).
To be able to attend this class, students need to have passed the “Introduction to
Cultural Studies”.
--- --- Freitag
“I have no accurate knowledge of my age” – American Slave Narratives, 4 CP
2 st. di 14-16 GABF 04/614 Süd
(vgl. Vorl.-Nr. 050 652)
Slave narratives are accounts of the lives of slaves who escaped to freedom. They
gained wide acceptance and international readership as authorized discourses on the
cruelties of slavery and played a major role in the abolitionist movement. We will
discuss a number of narratives, deal with their historical contexts and will also have a
look at other writings that were inspired by slave narratives, which are today
regarded as the „locus classicus of African American literary discources.“
The reading load in the course will be heavy. Students are advised to start reading
the narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Nat Turner, Frederic Douglass, and Harriet
Jacobs as well as Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin before taking the course.