ENG 447 (1522-FA20), ENG 547 (1559-FA20) - Major Forces in Literature

Course Introduction

The Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement, as it was known at the time, developed within a larger context of American Modernism. While for many artists Harlem was a geographical place, Harlem seized the imagination and left the confines of physical space; it came to stand for particular outlooks. Most prominent among these was a belief African American/Black artists shared with Whites from the Lost Generation “the premise that arts and letters had the power to transform a society” (David Levering Lewis from When Harlem Was in Vogue”; for many African American/Black artists, the transformation was expected to take place within race relations in the United States. This course will introduce students to some of the historical and social circumstances that helped create the Movement. This course will also explore the various tensions within it; between White patronage and Black representations, between Old Crowd and the New Crowd, between compulsory heterosexuality and queerness, between respectability and indecency.

Course Objectives

  • Students will be able to define the term canon
  • Students will be able to understand some of the historical and social circumstances that gave rise to the creation of the New Negro Movement
  • Students will gain an understanding of some of the ideological assumptions underlying the New Negro Movement
  • Students will be able to define essentialism
  • Students be able to define primitivism
  • Students will be able to understand the roles women and LGBTQ individuals played in the construction of New Negro identities
  • Students will learn about the complexities of the human condition, including racism and anti-racism
  • Students will be able to perform close readings of literary texts in written form
  • Students will be able to argue a point in a concise written form with attention to MLA citation style and Standard American English conventions.
  • Students will be able to produce a 6 page critical research essay with a minimum of two sources on one of the literary texts in the course