Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(ENL625) -  Σταματίνα Δημακοπούλου

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

We are committed to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal—being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory—there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.

– Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons

 

The course maps how activist thinkers, poets, and artists approached a black African American consciousness, its histories and expression, from the early 20^th century to the present day. Through a focus on a range of forms, spanning political speeches, manifestos, poems, music and the visual arts, we will explore how cultural production at large intersects with activism and visions of social change. We will begin with the origins and the formation of the New Negro Renaissance in Harlem; we will discuss networks and the dissemination of the cultural production of Harlem and we will focus on the paradoxes and blindspots of the promotion of racial uplift, and the prevalent affirmative rhetoric of the leading figures of the movement. We will move onto the entanglement of race, class and gender through literary representations of New Negro Women, and explore the troubled political alliances with the Marxist Left through the trajectory of Langston Hughes.

We will then examine how literature remains a form of protest after the New Deal, specifically in the writing of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, and how these writers paved the way for the political alliances that emerged in the Civil Rights era as the Black Power movement was gaining momentum. We will focus on how figures like Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, Jazz musicians like Max Roach and Abbie Lincoln, artists that were brought together in AfriCobra, embraced Black Power and engaged in their work the complex co-articulations of race and racism, gender, sexuality, cultural self-determination, the activist imperative, and formal experimentation. Throughout the course, we will discuss how an art form and/or cultural practice is conceived as a form of resistance and active intervention, as is the case with black feminist abolitionism, how a cultural practitioner becomes an ally to a political and cultural vision, whether embracing a political cause may or may not compromise experimentation, and in the case of hip hop, how artists navigate fame, oppositionality and co-option.

It is essential that you familiarise yourselves with materials and related documentation before each class and that you study recommended secondary resources and handouts in advance of each session. You also need to become familiar with the richness of African American culture and tradition in order to approach critically the materials that we will study; you can access numerous links and resources on the e-class. All seminar material can be accessed on the eclass.

Learning Outcomes:

In this course you will cultivate

• a nuanced understanding of important shifts and developments in African American cultural production
• a nuanced sense of how any cultural form is related to its context
• your skills for critical analysis of a variety of cultural forms
• evaluate key debates in the studied fields
• appraise the relevance of Black American history and culture to debates on the role and forms of creative activism in the present day
• advance your skills in critical appraisal of secondary sources, academic and non-academic criticism
• produce independent arguments and advance your research, and critical writing skills

 

Assessment and Mark Breakdown (ATTENDING STUDENTS):

Mid-term Exam 1 and Revision (25%) [Week 7]

Essay /Individual Project (30%) (1.500 words) [submission date TBC]

Class Participation and Group Work (20%)

Mid-term Exam 2 (25%)

In the mid-term examinations you will be given a critical prompt and excerpts from the studied texts are expected to build an argument in an appropriate academic register and critical vocabulary. In your argument there should be evidence that you have studied the recommended secondary sources. 

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS : final exam weighted at 100% [you are expected to respond to the exam essay questions as per above instructions for attending students]

 

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Τετάρτη 6 Σεπτεμβρίου 2023