African American Literature Research Papers (original) (raw)

- by
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- African American Literature, T.S. Eliot, Toni Morrison, The Waste Land

Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, Black Nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power... more

In recent years, Black poets and other poets of color have increasingly won many of the most prestigious prizes and awards within the majority and historically white field of US poetry. This article traces the interventions (writing, activism, and institution building) that have resulted in this "change." Rather than understanding the racial politics of poetry as an endlessly revolving door of scandals, or simply as a contest over prizes and economies of prestige, this article attends to the relationship between the world of poetry and the history of social movements, an exchange often mediated through the work of writers’ collectives. In particular, this article delineates how the interventions of Black poets and other poets of color (both individually and collectively) have shifted the world of poetry, while at the same time mirroring, connecting with, and speaking back to broader movements that seek to transform the world writ large.

One of America's most powerful and original dramatists, August Wilson offered an alternative history of the twentieth century, as seen from the perspective of black Americans. He celebrated the lives of those seemingly pushed to the margins of national life, but who were simultaneously protagonists of their own drama and evidence of a vital and compelling community. Decade by decade, he told the story of a people with a distinctive history who forged their own future, aware of their roots in another time and place, but doing something more than just survive. Wilson deliberately addressed black America, but in doing so he discovered an international audience.

- by Kian Pishkar Assistant Professor
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- Theatre Studies, Literature, Drama, African American Literature
- by Mar Gallego
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- African American Literature, African American Studies
- by Chloe L Sell
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- American Literature, Sexual Violence, African American Literature, Cultural Memory

This article presents a new interpretation of the famous folktale about enslaved Africans flying home, including the legend that only those who refrained from eating salt could fly back to Africa. It rejects claims that the tale is rooted in Igbo culture and relates to suicide as a desperate attempt to escape from slavery. Rather, an analysis of historical documents in combination with ethnographic and linguistic research makes it possible to trace the tale back to West-Central Africa. It relates objections to eating salt to the Kikongo expression curia mungua (to eat salt), meaning baptism, and claims that the tale originated in the context of discussions among the enslaved about the consequences of a Christian baptism for one's spiritual afterlife.

- by Jesse Zuba
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- American Literature, Gender Studies, Race and Ethnicity, African American Literature

The poem Adolescence by Rita Dove has been written in three parts and through them the growing up of a girl is portrayed. These poems have no definite structure and differ from each other in style. In Adolescence -I, we are introduced to young girls whispering behind their Grandmother"s porch. We can assume that there are at least three girls amongst whom at least one is older. The name of the eldest one is Linda and she is tinged while speaking of her

- by Ashmita Ashmita
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- African American Literature

The historical and cultural space of the Black Atlantic—a diasporic world of forced and voluntary migrations—has long provided fertile ground for the construction and reconstruction of new forms of classicism. From the aftermath of slavery up to the present day, black authors, intellectuals, and artists in the Atlantic world have shaped and reshaped the cultural legacies of classical antiquity in a rich variety of ways in order to represent their identities and experiences and reflect on modern conceptions of race, nation, and identity. The studies presented in this volume range across the anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone worlds, including literary studies of authors such as Derek Walcott, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and Junot Díaz, biographical and historical studies, and explorations of race and classicism in the visual arts. They offer reflections on the place of classicism in contemporary conflicts and debates over race and racism, and on the intersections between classicism, race, gender, and social status, demonstrating how the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome have been used to buttress racial hierarchies, but also to challenge racism and Eurocentric reconstructions of antiquity.

- by Ian Moyer and +2
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- Black Studies Or African American Studies, Classics, Black/African Diaspora, African Diaspora Studies
- by Chizoro Okeke
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- African Studies, African Diaspora Studies, African History, Africa
- by R. Joseph Rodríguez
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- Poetry, African American Literature, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes

A Marxist read of the (fairly) newly discovered "Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict", the earliest extant African-American prison narrative. Focuses on the early part of the book and Austin Reed's transition from home to... more

has 16 ratings and 2 reviews. S said: If you're like me, that is, if you got a generic public school education in t Muslims in

This article reconsiders Richard Wright's Native Son by comparing divergences between the published novel and an earlier typeset manuscript. It argues that such revisions render protagonist Bigger Thomas an icon of global class conflict rather than a national figure of racial tension. By revealing the continuities among critical essays that bookend the writing of Native Son, this essay also reveals how the novel's restructuring further elaborates Wright's globalism – highlighting his desire to produce work that transcended both national and racial categories. Finally, it considers Native Son as a work of “world literature” and a model for global minoritarian discourse. By examining “translations” of the novel into postcolonial contexts, it argues that the global afterlife of Native Son is no departure from the localized vision of the novel, but rather the recapitulation of its explicit globalism. This article thereby challenges critical convention dividing Wright's c...

Course Description This course introduces students to the demands and conventions of academic reading and writing. It stresses on invention, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment, along with effective critiquing and collaborating. Students will be required to analyze texts as they build effective arguments in their writing. Instruction on the stages of the writing process, from prewriting exercises through rough drafts and revisions, forms a key part of the syllabus. The course stresses on the recursive nature of writing and reading-as well as their instruction-and is intended to offer students with a variety of forms of discourse leading towards exposition and argumentation in common Standard English. The course aims at continuing to develop students' practical fluency with sentence, paragraph and thesis-development skills but with increasingly complex applications. Rules and Requirements Students will be assigned a total of 32 pages of writing that will be divided among a number of short term essays (4 pages, typewritten and double-spaced pages). They will be required to revise at least three of these essays. There will be a short essay assigned at the beginning of the semester in order to assess a student's writing skills.

Background: The medical profession has undergone a significant demographic change, with a dramatic increase in the number of women applying to medical school and practicing medicine.Objectives: In recognition of the changing demographics in the medical profession, the American Medical Association's Women Physicians Congress (AMA-WPC) conducted a members' survey to identify the issues affecting women physicians and to ascertain certain practice characteristics.Methods: In 2008, an e-mail survey link was sent to a randomly selected nationwide sample of 4992 WPC members, and a second, identical survey was sent to 596 female AMA members, utilizing the Epocrates database (Epocrates, Inc., San Mateo, California). Two e-mail reminders were sent for the first survey, which had a 15% response rate. A quota of 148 physicians was received within 4 days and was utilized to interpret results from the second survey.Results: Achieving work-life balance was a significant concern for 91% of the respondents (n = 884). Half of the respondents believed that pay is gender neutral, and 28% indicated that they were “somewhat or very concerned about sexual harassment”. When queried regarding practice patterns, 29% of respondents indicated that they had worked part-time at some point during their careers.Conclusions: In this survey, women physicians indicated that gender pay disparity and sexual harassment remain important issues in the medical profession. Less than a third of respondents had ever worked part-time, which should be a consideration for physician workforce studies. Barriers to part-time practice may exist.

- by soha patel
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- African American Literature

Convocation Address at Bethel University, August 29, 2016 about recent troubles in Minnesota, particularly the shooting of Philando Castille, and our responsibility as followers of the Gospel. There is an audio link also available. After you click the link, it's the first one in the queue; fast-forward to 15:00: https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/2016-2017-chapel-college-arts/id1148681753?mt=10

- by Sally Michael and +1
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- African American Literature

The term 'feminism' basically stands for the rights and equality of women. There is no definite definition of feminism. The feminist thinkers struggled a lot for making the simple and innocent women of the society aware about this and they always are trying to solve several issues related to women. It is again not a recent concept. Feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Virginia Woolf and many more thinkers forwarded a lot of different perspectives related to feminism. Ama Ata Aidoo, the former Education Minister of Ghana and an excellent academician has fought for the rights of the women of her native land. During her reign several provisions for Girls' Education were implemented in Ghana. She has a great contribution towards the literary field. In the present paper three of her popular literary pieces are taken into account to study the issues related to women of Africa especially of Ghana. These three literary works are: Anowa (1970), Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (1977) and Changes: A Love Story (1991). These three literary pieces deal with women issue from different perspectives. She is also featuring her protagonists accordingly, Anowa, Sissie and Esi are different from each other. Her protagonists seem to be very bold, independent which reveal the strength of women.

- by Ars Artium and +1
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- African Studies, English Literature, African Philosophy, Poetry

“Women of the Early Harlem Renaissance: African American Women
Writers, 1900–1922,” aims to digitize and annotate a limited array of
primary texts, mainly poetry, and present these materials as a digital
archive in the Scalar platform. The project aligns with what Kim
Gallon has referred to as a “technology of recovery,” which is one
of the core principles bridging African American literary studies
and the digital humanities. The project uses Scalar’s visualization
and tagging structures to explore stylistic, thematic, and social
relationships among a small group of writers, as well as to explore
the conversations these writers were having with established
writers and editors. Several key themes have begun to emerge as
the project has developed. The first of these is the confrontation
with American racism, which impacted African American
communities intensely in the 1910s; and these poets document
the emergence of racial violence and the response to that violence.
Second, these poets show how the role of African American
motherhood was evolving in the early years of the twentieth century, in part because of the stresses of raising children in a
racist society. Third, the black Church became strongly connected
to the movement for social justice at this time; and several, if not
most, of the writers in this archive explored Christian themes in
their anti-racist writing.

- by Amardeep Singh
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- Digital Humanities, Poetry, Women's Literature, African American Literature

Bread Givers (1925) by Anzia Yezierska and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison reveal the tension between self and society where ethnic women struggle with patriarchal borders to find a space, authority, and identity of their own. The central dilemma in both of the novels is how individuality and freedom can coexist where there are attachments to the spaces and communities one lives in. With the consideration of additional factors such as ethnicity, gender, class, and labor the female protagonists explore and question their American ethnic and racial identity in the novels which can be seen as a predecessor of the Civil Rights Movement. These diverse ethnicities and races have impacted and shaped the American literary and cultural contexts; leading to a redefinition of the original European form Bildungsroman. Yezierskàs and Morrison`s Jewish and Black female characters, are largely excluded from gaining power and authority due to racial discrimination, illiteracy, poverty, inequality, and patriarchal norms. At the same time these novels, unearth the multiple layers of repressed memories and forgotten stories of African and Jewish-American women in private and public labor. In both of the novels the familiar domestic sphere " home " which is associated with security and peace, turns into an alien, unknown, and in-between space where women feel isolation and homelessness within the household itself. The most familiar environments for women: the home and the family are questioned and multiple versions of oppression, isolation, and power struggles in the lives of African American and Jewish American women are exposed.

This essay is a critical examination of Russian prodigy Dostoyevsky's famous work "Crime and Punishment". In this essay, I attempt to deconstruct the ideas of duality, identity crisis, moral resurrection, and religion by illuminating the theme of prostitution and crime. My area of concern is Sonya and her multi-layered character used as a window to gauge the above-mentioned ideas.
Keywords: Prostitution, Christianity, Sin, soul, identity, Crime

- by Ridhi Bhutani
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- Russian Literature, Sex and Gender, Feminist Theory, Postcolonial Studies

These is the syllabus for LITR 451, which was taught as part of a pair of concurrent courses taught entirely virtually at the intermediate and advanced level during the pandemic-era Spring 2021 semester. At both levels, the course offered students a sampling of fiction by nine different African American (defined broadly as being an author with some measure of personal, familial, and/or cultural association with both Africa and North America) authors who published within the last ten years, including Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Esi Edugyan, Akwaeke Emezi, Tope Folarin, Yaa Gyasi, Okey Ndibe, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Jesmyn Ward, and Colson Whitehead.

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

- by Mohamed A Eno
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- Critical Theory, American Literature, African Studies, World Literatures

The human worth of any given people is best appreciated in terms of their confidence in their history and culture as the embodiments of the life-affirming values and examples on the basis of which they can empower themselves and develop their communities. Without such confidence, it is impossible for any given people to be taken seriously by other members of the human family. This article sets out to outline the rubrics of " the Afrotriumphalist perspective " (Gwekwerere and Mheta:2012) in the study of phenomena relating to Africa, in addition to demonstrating its African cultural grounding and historical provenance against the backdrop of the need for African scholars to actively participate in the development of such Africa-centered critical perspectives as would furnish a brand of consciousness that expedites the appreciation of African people as capable of transcending their existential challenges. The emphasis on " the African cultural grounding " and " historical provenance " of the Afrotriumphalist perspective in this article is best understood in the light of the realization that African culture and history do in fact embody the life-affirming consciousness that should inform African thought and behaviour in the unfolding of the African Renaissance agenda.

outdated Black Western imperialist/colonialist document carrying blatant insults and disregard to indigenous politico-religious governments nd sovereigns such as implying "backwads tribes of Africa" need "civilizing" and "conscientious spiritual worship" (Christianity). "Black nationalism" or "pan Africanism" had a foundation of Black colonial mentality built on INSULTING instead of CONSULTING indigenous Black civilizations, economic systems educational systems and utter disregard for indigenous governments as representing sovereign indigenous confederations/leagues/communities.

- by Bill Hardwig
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- African American Literature, Charles W. Chesnutt

The aim of the research is to explicate the importance of understanding bio-centric equality in the process of Self-realization. It focuses on how the 17 th century Western concept of Selfrealization, through the process of individuation emphasizing human beings as separate entities, detached from other human and non-human aspects, has induced a selfish nature. Alice Walker's famous novel The Color Purple has been chosen to explore the importance of an alternate reality of a biophilic narrative with regards to the process of Self-realization. Rosemary Radford Ruether's concepts of "Gaia" and the "Human Consciousness and Altruism" are employed on the text by Alice Walker.

- by Gregory Jones
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- African American Literature, Langston Hughes, Dramatic Monologue
- by Ernesto Martinez
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- American Literature, American Studies, Queer Theory, Gay And Lesbian Studies

This essay analyzes intersections of blackness and womanhood in William Faulkner’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY and LIGHT IN AUGUST and Zora Neal Hurston’s THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD to explore (1) how two authors of diverging races and genders engage the multiple jeopardy of marginalized race and gender in their novels; (2) how an author’s own racial and gendered positioning affects and informs his or her textual presentation of race and gender; and (3) the degree to which a novel’s treatment of race and gender provokes readerly engagement of these selfsame constructs. Ultimately, the paper concludes that Faulkner, perhaps limited by his own racial and gendered positioning, utilizes his black and female characters primarily to speak out of and to a white and male perspective. Accordingly, characters such as Dilsey Compson and the “womanshenegro” reveal more about the position and privilege of white men living in the American South than about the marginalization and oppression of black women in the same geocultural space. Hurston, conversely, in depicting Afra-Americans not as absent, subordinate, and victimized but as present, principal, and resilient, celebrates the fullness of Afra-American life, independent of—and without the need to invoke—dominant (white male) culture, power, and privilege. Moreover—through conversations held between Janie Crawford and Pheoby Watson and dialogue sustained between the narrator and protagonist—THEIR EYES not only bears witness to Afra-American traumas and triumphs but also impels the sometimes reluctant, non-Afra-American reader to engage intersections of blackness and womanhood in American (literary) culture.

- by Eden Wales
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- Reception Studies, Trauma Studies, African American Literature, William Faulkner

Office Location and Hours: Carman 398, Thursday 2-3 or by appointment Course Location: Carman Hall 301 Thursdays 12:30-1:45 + online Description: This course will be a survey of writers from the last half of the 20 th Century to the present focusing on those whose work conveys the urban experience through various genres --novels, poetry, autobiography -and in some cases pushes the boundaries of what we consider writing. The focus will be on New York experience viewed in a diasporic sense: as the landing place of immigrants and migrants from the south, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic. A key question we will consider is how the process of adapting to city life, particularly the changes in the time periods covered is conveyed in the works of these writers. We will also ask basic questions such as who lives in the city? What voices are heard and how do various writers articulate their unique experiences? The goal of this course is to become familiar with a few key writers from the New York literary scene from the 1960s to the present and how they relate to the Black Arts, Nuyorican, and hip hop cultural movements.

This paper traces the impossibility of the fulfillment of the American dream for African Americans in August Wilson‟s Fences. It examines why Troy Maxon, as the protagonist of the play,
is not able to fulfill his dreams of freedom, and economic achievements in an environment of
oppression where he finds himself surrounded by hostile whites who hinder his development. It
indicates that the racial discrimination, manifested in various forms including racial segregation
prevalent in the white-dominated American society, impedes Troy‟s progress. A large number of
African-Americans migrated from southern states to the north in 1920s and 1930s in order to find
jobs in industrial northern states. They had been told that the United States was the promised land of
equal chances wherein everyone regardless of race and gender was able to progress from rags to
riches. They left the South, in which racism was still pervasive despite the abolition of slavery, and
moved to the North for the fulfillment of the dreams they had been promised. The advocates of the
American Dream claimed that hard diligence and intelligence could lead a man to material
prosperity. Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates that since African-Americans are considered to be
„„others‟‟ in the white dominated society, financial progress and other aspects of the American
Dream remain impossible dreams for them.

Translation by Xu Chaolin. Shanghai Jiaotong University Press, 2020.