hathaway3

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Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (1984).
Heather Hathaway
Dept. of English, Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI 53233


Interdisciplinary, lower-division course in African American Studies
2 semesters
                 Introduction to African American Studies


     This course is designed both to introduce students to key
issues, themes, and methods in African American Studies as well as to
pique interest in an effort to encourage further study of the discipline;
thus, the course is comprised of important texts, but also of those
which have proven to have "high appeal" in the past. I have presumed
very little knowledge on the students' parts of either African American
or ethnic studies more generally.
     Each week is focussed around a literary text through which we
explore a central issue in interdisciplinary fashion. For example,
during the unit on slavery we study a variety of slave narratives, and
use these texts as entry points into a discussion of the historical period
and cultural moment which informed their creation.I have selected
both traditional and non-traditional texts, but have attempted to
provide the students with a solid foundation in those which they might
be most commonly expected to know following an introductory course
in African American studies.


Unit 1: African Folk Roots and The Oral Tradition

          Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, The Book of
          Negro Folklore
          Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black
          Consciousness
          Harold Scheub, The African Storyteller
          Roger D. Abrahams, ed., Afro-American Folktales
          Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past

This unit is designed with three primary goals in mind: 1) to
familiarize the students with African culture and folktale prior to the
arrival of slaves in the United States; 2) to examine the transformation
of these cultural forms in the American context into uniquely and
innovatively African American expressions; and 3) to unseat traditional
notions of orality as less valid than written literature. This will provide
foundational knowledge for subsequent examinations of poetry, music,
and contemporary literature.

Unit 2: Images of Slavery and Freedom

     Two of the following narratives:
          Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of an
          American Slave
          Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of . . .
          Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

          Harriet Wilson, Our Nig
          Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave

This unit will examine both the institution of slavery from a historical
perspective through lectures, and will illustrate the construction of
slave narratives as abolitionist material as well as a distinct literary
genre. It will also, through contrasts of the selections from group one
and group two, assess the nature of freedom for "free" Blacks during
slavery. The particular selection of the narratives will depend upon
student preparation.


Unit 3: Post-Emancipation Turning Points: Race Ideologies Defined

          Accomodationism: Booker T. Washington, Up from
Slavery
          The Talented Tenth: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of
Black Folk
          The Women's View: Ida B. Wells, selected essays

          C.Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow
          August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915


This period represents a turning point in African American intellectual
history as Washington and Du Bois vied for the position of "race
leader"--each espousing rather different beliefs about the means to
equality--while Ida B. Wells, among others, emphasized the
relationship between gender, sexuality, and lynching as an
increasingly institutionalized system of oppression. The primary texts
will illustrate the most salient aspects of each figure's philosophy,
while the secondary material will provide historical context for the
period so that students may understand clearly the cultural moments
out of which these varying philosophies were produced.

Unit 4: The Great Migration and the Development of Black Urban
Centers
          Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods
          Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus
          Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto
          1890-1930
          Allen Spears, Black Chicago 1890-1920

This unit focusses on the forces that pushed Blacks out of the South
following Reconstruction and into Northern urban environments. The
contrast of Osofsky and Spears is intended to demystify "the ghetto"
for largely unfamiliar students by showing differences between
Chicago and Harlem both during the period and, by extension, in the
present. Dunbar's novel will be used 1) to address the issue of
migration from a cultural perspective, 2) as an important document of
literary naturalism in African American letters which is related to
Zola, Dreiser, and Crane, for example, and 3) to serve as a precursor
to the literature produced during the Harlem Renaissance.

Unit 5: The Harlem Renaissance

          James Weldon Johnson, Autobiography of an Ex-
          Coloured Man
          Music Session: Ragtime and Early Jazz

          Alain Locke, The New Negro
          Slide Presentations on art work of Aaron Douglas,
          Augusta Savage, William H. Johnson, Meta Fuller

          Langston Hughes, poetry
          Music Session: Blues forms

          Nathan Huggins, The Harlem Renaissance
          David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue

This unit explores the complexity of the Harlem Renaissance as a
cultural moment by considering it from literary, musical, historical,
and artistic perspectives. The New Negro contains works by most of
the major authors involved in the Renaissance and will serve both as
the "bible" of the movement, and as the introductory text to a number
of writers. The music and art sessions will demonstrate the
pervasiveness of the "Renaissance philosophy," as well as will
illustrate the individual and differing responses of each artist to the
period. Finally, the motivations and legacies of the explosion in
artistic activity will be addressed through use of the historical texts as
both secondary and primary sources.

Unit 6: Love and Hate

          Zora Neal Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
          Richard Wright, Native Son
          June Jordan, "Toward a Black Balancing of Love and
          Hatred" in Civil Wars

          Ralph Ellision, Invisible Man
          James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone"
          Richard Wright, "Blueprint for Negro Writing"
          Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues" and "The World
          and the Jug," from Shadow and Act

This literary unit is designed to reveal to students the range of
responses to what does or should constitute a "black aesthetic  in the
United States, and to acquaint them with the dialogue surrounding the
issue as it has been expressed at different historical moments by
prominent African American authors. Each writer espouses distinct
beliefs ranging from protest (Wright) to affirmation (Hurston) to
transcendance (Ellison).

Unit 7: Civil Rights

          Alice Walker, Meridian
          Martin Luther King, Jr., The Speeches of Martin
          Luther King, Jr.
          Malcom X (with Alex Haley), The Autobiography of
          Malcolm X
          Film: Selections from "Eyes on the Prize"

This unit explores the Civil Rights era in fiction and documentary
history, again in an effort to demonstrate the complexity of the moment
and the range of responses by African American intellectuals and
artists. Walker's novel, although difficult for many students, is
particularly useful in its examination of the relationship between art
and politics, as well as of political ideologies, during the period.

Unit 8: Black Male Mythologies

          Wideman, Brothers and Keepers
          Sociological studies and popular culture articles on
          separate school systems for Black male youth
          Music session: Rap

This unit is designed to cause a critical evaluation of the mythologies
promoted about black males in recent years, primarily in order to
disrupt stereotypes produced by media images. Black men are
generally depicted as at a crisis point--a point which instills irrational
fear and promotes racism. This unit is intended to make students
conscious of their own subconscious adherence to systems of
oppression rooted in unfamiliarity.

Unit 9: Out-chorus

          Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

This text has been selected as the culminating piece because of its
remarkable ability to encompass virtually all the themes of the course.
Morrison's use of the folktale of the Flying Africans recalls the first
unit's attention to the importance of oral tradition in African American
culture, as well as emphasizes the presence of Africanisms and folk
tradition in Black American culture nationally (Unit 5). Her use of
flight as a literary motif echoes patterns extending from slave narrative
(Unit 2) to contemporary Black literature (Unit 6), while her use of
song carries on the theme of music as central to African American
culture (Units 1,2,5,7, and 8). Morrisons exploration of the vengeant
nationalism of the Seven Days to the transcendent love expressed by
Pilate provides commentary on debates about race ideologies that have
characterized African American intellectual history (Units 3 and 6).
Finally, her use of a male protagonist, as well as her serious
consideration of male-male and male-female interaction, provides
important commentary on contemporary gender relations (Unit 8).