Seminar: African American Novels Since 1950 - Details

Seminar: African American Novels Since 1950 - Details

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Veranstaltungsname Seminar: African American Novels Since 1950
Untertitel Aufbaumodul Amerikanische Literatur; Aufbaumodul Amerikanistik Literatur I
Semester SS 2018
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 15
Heimat-Einrichtung Amerikanistik / Literaturwissenschaft
Veranstaltungstyp Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin Montag, 09.04.2018 18:15 - 19:45, Ort: (Adam-Kuckhoff-Str. 35, SR 3)
Voraussetzungen Students who have successfully passed their "Introduction to Literary Studies" (Basismodul Einführung in die englische und amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft) are welcome to this course on selected African American novels published since the middle of the 20th century.
Lernorganisation All students taking this class must have a copy of each novel in paper format and bring the relevant book to class. Not having the relevant novel with you is unacceptable. In order for students to pick up skills necessary in academia, we will spend some time on how to do research and presentations as well as on how to write papers. The university library (OPAC, MLA-IB and other databases) will be a topic as will be the Internet as a research tool (JStor, Google Scholar etc.). In addition, there will be an introduction to CITAVI and how to use that bibliographical tool. The MLA style sheet (7th ed., 2009) is our model for all written work. (Please, do NOT use MLA 8th ed., 2016.) How to write essays the way American colleges expect them to be written will also be discussed.
Leistungsnachweis Requirements
Students will need to pass four quizzes if they want credit for this seminar. Quizzes are tests checking on whether students have read the novels and require no background reading. They are expected not to miss more than three sessions and participate actively in discussions. Also, students must present in class (15-20 mins. plus 5-10 mins. discussion) on a topic to be arranged with the lecturer. Each student must present a handout (Thesenpapier) that is sent to the lecturer a week before the presentation is due. A copy of the reviewed handout must be available to all students on the day of presentation. Reading assignments (secondary literature) will be given on a weekly basis. Studying in groups is encouraged.
At the end of the semester BA students will have to write an essay/Hausarbeit (ca. 12-14 pages) whereas students planning to be teachers will have to take an oral exam of 30 mins. (probably in July). The BA essays are due at the end of September.
Studiengänge (für) ANG.03202.02 - [Aufbaumodul] Amerikanische Literatur LA Gym, LA Sek
ANG.05280.03 - Aufbaumodul: Amerikanische Literatur LA Gym, LA Sek ab WS 2012/13
ANG.04628.03 - Aufbaumodul Amerikanistik Literatur I BA Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60/90 LP
ANG.06158.01 - Aufbaumodul: Amerikanistik Literatur I BA Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60/90 LP (ab WS 2015/16)
SWS 2
ECTS-Punkte 5

Räume und Zeiten

(Adam-Kuckhoff-Str. 35, SR 3)
Montag: 18:15 - 19:45, wöchentlich (13x)

Modulzuordnungen

Kommentar/Beschreibung

The great majority of African Americans never learned to read or write before the end of the Civil War (1861-65). Teaching slaves these cultural skills was prohibited in many especially southern states. A large number of slave narratives testifies to their perspective nevertheless and illustrates that slaves were commodities rather than human beings then. Among the best-known slave narratives are those by Frederick Douglass (ca. 1818–1895), Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897), and Solomon Northrup (ca. 1807-ca. 1857) whose Twelve Years a Slave (1853) made the headlines when it was turned into a movie in 2013.
This summer term we will read four novels two of which were published in the 1950s and two in recent years. James Baldwin's (1924-1987) classic Go, Tell It on the Mountain (1953) will be our point of departure, and it will be complemented by the documentary I Am Not Your Negro (2016) which was written by Baldwin showing the racial climate in America at mid-century. Go, Tell It on the Mountain is a coming-of-age story of 14-year-old John Grimes set in Harlem where he struggles with his father's past, violence, and religion. A bildungsroman of a different kind is Paule Marshall's (*1929) Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) which is set in Brooklyn. It is the story of young Selina Boyce, the daughter of Caribbean immigrants, who witnesses her parents' being drawn between wanting to become American and longing to go back to Barbados.
While Baldwin and Marshall use New York City around the time of World War II as a backdrop for their plots, the two younger novelists, Colson Whitehead (*1969) and Jesmyn Ward (*1977), provide us with a historical perspective and a contemporary one of the American south. Whitehead's Underground Railroad (2016) is a challenging novel in which his title's metaphor (historically a network of people helping slaves escape to freedom) actually materializes as a railroad. Slaves who manage to escape on that railroad, however, are in danger of being caught making them prey to slave catchers (as in Twelve Years a Slave). Whitehead's characters have to endure an Odyssey of violence and loss. Brutality of a different kind is shown in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones (2011), the story of a black Mississippi family early in the 21st century in which drugs and alcohol are part of their everyday experience as is teenage pregnancy. We witness this family's struggle for twelve days with hurricane Katrina as a backdrop showing "lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty."

LITERATURE
Did you know that as a student at MLU you are entitled to a free version of Citavi or EndNote? Citavi and EndNote manage your sources and, among many other things, produce bibliographies in MLA style with a click of your mouse. Check details at <bibliothek.uni-halle.de/benutz/litverwalt/>.

1. PRIMARY LITERATURE [PLEASE, PURCHASE THESE EDITIONS SO WE ALL CAN USE THE SAME EDITION IN CLASS]
Baldwin, James. Go, Tell It on the Mountain. With an Introduction by Andrew O'Hagan. London: Penguin, 2001 [or any reprint]. Penguin Modern Classics. [£ 9,99]
[EAN 9780141185910]
Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. Mineola: Dover Publications, 2009.
[ISBN 9780486468327] [Thalia € 9,99]
Ward, Jesmyn. Salvage the Bones. London: Bloomsbury, pb. ed. 2017. [£ 9,99]
[ISBN 9781408897720]
Whitehead, Colson. Underground Railroad. London: Fleet/Little Brown, pb. ed. 2017. [£ 7,99]
[ISBN 9780708898406]

2. SECONDARY MATERIAL
Armstrong, Julie Buckner, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature. New York : Cambridge UP, 2015. Cambridge Companions to Literature.
Babb, Valerie M. A History of the African American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. Print.
Bendixen, Alfred, ed. A Companion to the American Novel. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012; pb. 2015. Print. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture 80.
Cassuto, Leonard, Clare V. Eby, and Benjamin Reiss, eds. The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.
Denniston, Dorothy Hamer. The Fiction of Paule Marshall: Reconstructions of History, Culture, and Gender. Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, 1995.
Donaldson, Melvin. "African American Traditions and the American Novel." A Companion to the American Novel. Ed. Alfred Bendixen. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012; pb. 2015. 274-290. Print. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture 80.
Elia, Nada. Trances, Dances, and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women's Narratives. New York, NY: Garland, 2001. Garland reference library of the humanities.
Elliott, Emory, gen. ed. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Print.
Engler, Bernd, and Kurt Müller. Metzler Lexikon amerikanischer Autoren. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000. Print.
Field, Douglas. All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.
Fremd. Directed by Christian Walther. Solothurn : Insertfilm, 2013 [DVD]. [Movie based on Baldwin's 1953 essay "Stranger in the village"].
Graham, Maryemma, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.
Henderson, Carol E., ed. James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain: Historical and Critical Essays. New York, NY: Lang, 2006. Modern American literature: new approaches 49.
I Am Not Your Negro. DVD. Written by James Baldwin and directed by Raul Peck. Velvet Film, 2016.
[ISBN 5060105724688]
Jarrett, Gene Andrew, ed. A Companion to African American literature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Blackwell companions to literature and culture. [Online version of Companion to African American Literature. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Marcus, Greil, and Werner Sollors, eds. A New Literary History of America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009. Print. Harvard UP Reference Library. pb ed. 2012.
Melchior, Bernhard. "Re-visioning" the Self Away from Home: Autobiographical and Cross-cultural Dimensions in the Works of Paule Marshall. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998. Europäische Hochschulschriften 14. [Diss. Univ. Bamberg, 1996.
Tawil, Ezra F., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature. New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 2016. Print. Cambridge companions to literature.
Werlock, Abby H. P., ed. The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel. New York: Facts on File, 2006. Print. Facts on File library of American literature.
Zapf, Hubert, and Helmbrecht Breinig, eds. Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2010. Print.

Internet:
www.20min.ch/interaktiv/Afroamericans/print.html